Zur Distribution wissenschaftlicher Inhalte

Scientific content or knowledge of scientists is useful only in case of distributing or communicating it from author to recipient. This is the task of the scientific communication system. As the first upcoming scientific journals superseding the individual letters between scientists in the middle of the 17th century marked a first radical innovation, the possibility arises that nowadays the system again will be transformed significantly by forthcoming digitalization. In the last years a lot of activities arose which maybe could compete with the traditional way to communicate scientific knowledge, and which shall lead out of the so called serial crisis. The most discussed idea is the Open Access approach. The aim of this paper is to analyze the potential of the Open Access idea, and an alternative suggestion.In a first step the reasons of the serial crisis are analyzed. They are multilayered, and not only reducible to strategic behavior of the publishing houses. Secondly, the Open Access idea is evaluated. As a result for the self archiving approach it...