Stevan Harnad wrote: [cut]
> "The UK should maximise the benefits to the British tax-payer from the > research it funds by strongly encouraging not only (as it does now) that > all findings should be published, but also that open access to them > should be provided, for all potential users, through either of the two > available means: (1) publishing them in open-access journals (whenever > suitable ones exists) (5%) and (2) publishing the rest (95%) in > toll-access journals whilst also self-archiving them publicly on their > own university's website." [cut] I agree with what he wrote, except where he implies that suitable Open Access journals only exist for 5% of papers. He probably means that currently, only 5% *is being published* in OA journals. Suitable OA journals exist to cover virtually the entire spectrum of the life and medical sciences, at multiple levels. The life and medical sciences represent more than half of the published scientific research. So it follows that OA journals are available and can deal with more than half of all that's published in the sciences. It's not the *number* of journals that exist that counts, but how much of the whole spectrum is covered by OA journals. Why should an Open Access world need to have as many journals as the old subscription world? No problem if it does, but there's no need. Jan Velterop www.biomedcentral.com
