Opening Access to Research

Traditionally, the scholarly journal market operates so that research institutions are charged high prices and the wider public is often excluded altogether, while authors can usually publish for free and commercial publishers enjoy high profits. Two forms of open access regulation can mitigate these problems: (i) authors are required to publish in a journal which allows readers free and immediate access to their article, or (ii) authors are required to make freely available an inferior substitute to the published paper (and to publish in a journal which permits this). The former policy is likely to result in authors paying to publish, which may lead to a reduction in the quantity of published papers and may make authors less willing to publish in selective journals. The latter policy makes freely available only an inferior version of the published article, but may be consistent with authors publishing for free.