Open Access Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects Chandos Information Professional Series

This book brings together many of the worlds 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 todays debate and looking at the kind of research world that would be possible with open access to research outputs.

Part 1 Open Access - History, Definitions and Rationale: Overview of scholarly communication; What is open access; Open access: a symptom and a promise; Economic costs of toll access; The impact loss to authors and research; The technology of open access. Part 2 Open Access and Researchers; The culture of open access: researchers; Views and responses; Opening access by overcoming Zenos paralysis; Researchers and institutional repositories. Part 3 Open access and other participants: Open access to the research literature: a funders perspective; Business models in open access publishing; Learned society business models and open access; Open all hours? Institutional models for open access. Part 4 The position around the world: DARE also means dare: institutional repository status in the Netherlands as of early 2006; Open access in the USA; Towards open access to UK research; Open access in Australia? Open access in India. Part 5 The future: Open competition: beyond human reader-centric views of scholarly literatures; The open research web.

Dr Neil Jacobs, an experienced information professional who has worked both in traditional libraries and on national projects and online services and works at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and University of Bristol, UK and is responsible for developing and running national online services.