Free For All? The Science of Publishing Research Online.

This article reports on the decision of representatives from leading U.S. non-profit medical and scientific societies and publishers to provide free access and distribution of published research findings, as of June 2004. Since 1995, more than 100 society and university not-for-profit publishers have linked up with the HighWire Press of the Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to turn traditional print journals into online resources that can be easily assessed by both the scientific community and the general public. Via the Washington D.C. Principles for Free Access to Science, these not-for-profit publishers are now partnering with scholarly communities, including libraries, to provide the scientific community and the general public with online access to more than 1.6 million articles, with more than 600,000 of such articles available free of charge. Making information free to individuals who cannot afford to pay for it to enhance the democratization of information is not easy, particularly given a lack of resources to enhance non-commercial online ventures. The challenge is to continue to maintain the ability to cover the costs of publication.