Open Access dynamics and prospects

Abstract

The www has started a new era in dissemination of scientific information, which is already to such extent propagated by electronic media that it has become practically independent from the system of subscription driven printed journals. These developments of marked increase in availability of scientific information, commonly described as Open Access, have profound consequences for functioning of all segments of scientific community and also strategically influence education systems. Generally, there are growing expectations for freely available results of publicly funded research. Open Access (OA), which is developing for ca 25 years, has generated a number of large publishers (i.e. BioMedCentral) and over 5 000 of scholarly peer reviewed journals, which can be checked in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; https://doaj.org/). Leaving aside new types of business models which evolved in connection with widespread of electronic publishing, we will analyze the OA phenomenon from the point of view of an active life science researcher, as a reader and an author. Thus, the OA “for profit” publishing modalities, distinguished as “green route” and “gold route” will be presented as well as some extracts from ongoing debate on the economics of particular variants. Finally, the question of choice between publishing options for prospective results in getting cited, will be touched upon.