The Open Access Debate

Abstract

For more than a year there has been widespread discussion of a new publishing model for scientific papers, generally referred to as “open access.” Although there are several definitions of this term, all revolve around two basic principles: that authors retain copyright of their own research papers and license to publishers only the rights required to distribute those papers; and that research papers are made freely available in publicly accessible databases such as PubMedCentral, immediately or soon after publication.