Abstract: The following paragraphs are reproduced from the website of the publisher [1]. This book brings together many of the world’s leading open access experts to provide an analysis of the key strategic, technical and economic aspects on the topic of open access. Open access to research papers is perhaps a defining debate for publishers, librarians, university managers and many researchers within the international academic community. Starting with a description of the current situation and its shortcomings, this book then defines the varieties of open access and addresses some of the many misunderstandings to which the term sometimes gives rise. There are chapters on the technologies involved, researchers, perspectives, and the business models of key players. These issues are then illustrated in a series of case studies from around the world, including the USA, UK, Netherlands, Australia and India. Open access is a far-reaching shift in scholarly communication, and the book concludes by going beyond today’s debate and looking at the kind of research world that would be possible with open access to research outputs.

Abstract: This study assessed characteristics of publishers who published 2010 open access (OA) journals indexed in Scopus. Publishers were categorized into six types; professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations. Type of publisher was broken down by number of journals/articles published in 2010, funding model, location, discipline and whether the journal was born or converted to OA. Universities and societies accounted for 50% of the journals and 43% of the articles published. Professional publisher accounted for a third of the journals and 42% of the articles. With the exception of professional and scholar/researcher publishers, most journals were originally subscription journals that made at least their digital version freely available. Arts, humanities and social science journals are largely published by societies and universities outside the major publishing countries. Professional OA publishing is most common in biomedicine, mathematics, the sciences and engineering. Approximately a quarter of the journals are hosted on national/international platforms, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia largely published by universities and societies without the need for publishing fees. This type of collaboration between governments, universities and/or societies may be an effective means of expanding open access publications.

Abstract: The move from subscription only publishing of scholarly articles to open access has been much slower than previously anticipated by many Open Access (OA) advocates. Despite the many advantages that OA offers, this particular branch of E-commerce imposes several formidable barriers to change. A framework conceptualizing these barriers that was developed over a decade ago was revisited to see if the significance of these barriers has changed. Nowadays, building the IT infrastructure, support from indexing services and finding a sustainable business model are no longer important barriers. For gold OA publishing the academic reward system is still a major obstacle, whereas more marketing and critical mass is needed for both gold OA and green OA. Green OA self-archiving is still also strongly affected by what subscription publishers allow. In the overall balance the situation has nevertheless improved significantly.

Abstract: Publishing, and by extension publication, is in a state of rapid flux. This has become evident in recent years, and some have now even characterized the domain as unstable, with the traditional forms of publication no longer being sustainable.[...]