Open access publishing for Puget Sound

Anyone who has been following the news in academic publishing these days has heard the words "open access." There are many definitions of open access, but in the simplest terms, it means free access to scholarly or peer-reviewed research.

Free access to scholarly information may not seem radical—academic research is often supported by public funds, so why shouldn't the research be publicly available?—but it's not the standard model. Academic publishing is big business, and most journals are only available through paid subscriptions, often costing thousands of dollars. In 2010, the academic publisher Reed Elsevier reported revenues of $3.2 billion, with a profit margin of 36%.

Publishing in recognized academic journals is immensely important. Academic careers are built around it, and peer-reviewed journals have greatly advanced the course of research across all academic disciplines. But does a journal have to be expensive to be effective? One University of Washington scientist, Carl Bergstram, has created a graph designed to compare effectiveness of journals with their cost. Check out his website at eigenfactor.org, in particular his Cost Effectiveness graph for open access journals: http://www.eigenfactor.org/openaccess/.

For more information about open access publishing, you might also be interested in this FAQ produced by the University of Washington Library:  http://www.lib.washington.edu/scholpub/facts/faq.