I know that many of the readers of this blog are more interested in literary publishing than scientific research. However, the debate about how best to use the Internet to disseminate information about the latest scientific and medical findings is, I believe, relevant to all types of publishing in one way or another.

There are a number of criss-crossing arguments. In essence, the open-access advocates believe that the fruits of research should be made available through the Internet free of charge to every citizen. This is particularly true where the research has been funded by taxpayers (the bulk of research is funded this way). The business model proposed is that the author (or more likely funding agency) would pay the publisher a fee to cover the costs of publication and access would then be 'open'.

The counterargument is that an 'author-pays' model increases the likelihood of less vigorous refereeing; less investment by publishers in improving the processes of editing, storing and distributing; the proposed business model is intrinsicaly more administratively burdensome than the present one (collecting fees from tens or hundreds of thousands of authors is harder than collecting subscriptions from a thousand university libraries); and is commercially unsustainable.

In any event, a number of open-access publishers have been established and are carving a niche for themselves. In some cases they are achieving very respectable 'impact factors' ( a measure of quality). Nature recently published an article (which I linked too in an earlier posting) suggesting that a well-known open-access pioneer, Public Library of Science, is a bit wobbly financially. This caused a fair amount of comment and has generated some really interesting views and discussion on Nature News Blog. I really think the debate is important and has implications for copyright, for freedom of information and for future publishing investment strategies. Do read it. It is one of the strengths of the web and publishing that dangerous and difficult arguments can be freely expressed and everyone can participate.

If this is all too serious for you perhaps you'd enjoy my entry for the worst song lyrics of the month.