The end of journals? Open access, impact and the production of knowledge

There are various models of open access available, but the underlying principle is that authors pay for their article to be published in a journal. The cost will generally be around £900 to £2000, which will theoretically be built into future proposals for research funding. While there is widespread support for tearing down the paywalls around research findings, changing publishing’s funding model raises some significant issues, not least for the social sciences where monographs (books) and other non-journal outputs play a more significant role than in the natural sciences (although this may be on the decline).

Blog entry on The University of Nottingham, UK.

See also this article on the discussion about the future of open access publishing.