Caught in the Crossfire

The new ‘Open Access’ model of scholarly communication exploits both the internet and new publishing technologies to free up research literature to the benefit of authors, readers, students, libraries, funding bodies, and society as a whole. Two OA strategies could be used to move towards a fairer and more efficient communications system; self-archiving, by which scholars deposit their publications in free electronic repositories, and open access journals, which do not charge for access to the papers, but make them available to all electronically and look to other financial models to cover the costs of peer-review and publishing. The article which looks at the origins of Open Access, traces its development, and highlights the growing dilemma faced by academic authors on whether to support these new models of publication and dissemination in preference to their traditionally favoured high profile, but expensive to buy, subscription-based journals.