VMENKOV / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The number of new open access articles is growing at a rate of 30 percent per year since the year 2000, according to a study published last week in the open access journal PLoS ONE, in contrast to a 3.5 percent growth in overall journal publishing. Some hail the results as evidence that open access is a successful business model. Nature Publishing Group, for example, recently announced its foray into open access with its new journal Scientific Reports, which like PLoS ONE, will publish peer-reviewed articles in all areas of science. But others say that a growth rate of 30 percent per year only highlights how far there is yet to go. "The rate is much too low for the needs of research," Stevan Harnad, ...
