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.
Highlights
I made a study of the Open Access situation and an analysis of the major barriers holding back the development; Open Access to scientific publications—an analysis of the barriers to change? [1]
Open Access (OA) can for peer reviewed journal articles be achieved in two major ways [3], by publishing in journals that in themselves make the content freely available (Gold OA) or by the author or a third party making a copy of the article or the preceding manuscript available somewhere else on the web, for instance in a subject or institutional repository (Green OA)
Of particular importance is that the APC-funded business model for running Open Access journals has proved its sustainability, at least in biomedical publishing, and that suitable institutional repositories are starting to be available for most authors
Summary
I made a study of the Open Access situation and an analysis of the major barriers holding back the development; Open Access to scientific publications—an analysis of the barriers to change? [1]. The three channels discussed were open access journals, subject and institutional repositories. In the opinion of this author there were no (or very small) legal obstacles for the proliferation of Open Access Journals, whereas this was at the time seen as a central issue to be solved if institutional repositories are to take a prominent position in the OA provision. The proliferation of OA journals were deemed to be sustainable business models, recognition in the academic reward systems and critical mass. In the following these barriers, and what has changed in decade, will be discussed one by one
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