Open Access at a Crossroads

Last week marked the annual celebration/marketing event that is Open Access Week, and this year it seemed something of a mixed bag. Open access (OA) is growing into maturity, and has rapidly become integrated into the scholarly publishing landscape over the last fifteen or so years. We have now reached a point where experiments have been in place for a while and results can be analyzed. Early assumptions can now be measured and the move to OA seems to have reached something of a crossroads.

Make no mistake, OA is here to stay, and there is no crisis of confidence, at least as far as the continuing growth in access to the research literature. But the repercussions of the business models and methodologies chosen for OA are beginning to be recognized.

The first red flag during OA Week came on Monday, when Jeffrey Beall announced that he was adding Frontiers Media to his infamous list of predatory publishers.