Consensus is difficult in open-access debate

How to provide access to peer-reviewed research articles is a topic mired in controversy. It raises questions about who research is for, how the results should be disseminated and how the whole process should be funded. On the following pages a panel of industry experts debate these issues and consider what the future holds for open access:

• 'Open access is much wider than just readers not paying'
  Martin Richardson, Oxford Journals
• 'Academics have access anyway'
  Michael Mabe, formerly of Elsevier
• 'Text mining of subject archives will enable new facts to be discovered'
  Robert Terry, The Wellcome Trust
• 'Self-archiving should be mandatory'
  Steven Harnad, University of Quebec in Montreal and University of Southampton
• 'The environmental community will embrace open-access'
  Tim Smith, Institute of Physics Publishing
• 'Many areas of research are funded by taxpayers but they do not see the results'
  Matthew Cockerill, BioMed Central
• 'The first priority should be awareness-raising'
  Alma Swan, Key Perspectives
• 'Our community is used to immediate release of preprints'
  Jens Vigen, CERN
• 'Get research authors to change their behaviour'
  Leslie Carr, University of Southampton

Interviews by Siân Harris

What are your thoughts on the open-access debate? We are doing a short anonymous poll, so let us know what you think. We will tell you the results in our next issue.

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