OA journals are available for more than half of all papers

From: Jan Velterop <velterop_at_biomedcentral.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 23:35:49 +0100

Stevan Harnad wrote:

[cut]

> "The UK should maximise the benefits to the British tax-payer from the
> research it funds by strongly encouraging not only (as it does now) that
> all findings should be published, but also that open access to them
> should be provided, for all potential users, through either of the two
> available means: (1) publishing them in open-access journals (whenever
> suitable ones exists) (5%) and (2) publishing the rest (95%) in
> toll-access journals whilst also self-archiving them publicly on their
> own university's website."

[cut]

I agree with what he wrote, except where he implies that suitable Open
Access journals only exist for 5% of papers. He probably means that
currently, only 5% *is being published* in OA journals. Suitable OA
journals exist to cover virtually the entire spectrum of the life and
medical sciences, at multiple levels. The life and medical sciences
represent more than half of the published scientific research. So it
follows that OA journals are available and can deal with more than half of
all that's published in the sciences. It's not the *number* of journals
that exist that counts, but how much of the whole spectrum is covered by
OA journals. Why should an Open Access world need to have as many journals
as the old subscription world? No problem if it does, but there's no need.

Jan Velterop
www.biomedcentral.com
Received on Sat Jul 10 2004 - 23:35:49 BST