FEATURE ARTICLE
Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals
Can scientists find ways to share published research without high cost? The experiences of one society suggest it can be done cheaply, even profitably
Thomas Walker
The digital revolution in scientific publishing is now under way, but
the endpoint is far from clear. One question is especially
problematic: Who will pay for the electronic publication of
journals? A recent editorial in Science embraced the pay-per-view
model that predominates among commercial journal publishers. Thomas
J. Walker endorses an alternative model more suited to many
scholarly societies: a system funded by authors and libraries with a
free, searchable archive of research results available on the Internet.
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