Study shows open-access support

The SOAP project (Study of Open Access Publishing) will present the results of its two-year European Commission-funded examination of open-access publishing on 13 January at an open symposium in Berlin.

In the two-year study, the SOAP project is said to have performed the most comprehensive study ever of open-access journals, publishers and business models. It includes analysis of publishing houses, learned societies and licensing along with the overall supply and demand for open access. The study collected over 50,000 responses, including over 38,000 from published academic researchers worldwide. Early results indicate that open access is not just now an accepted model for academic publishing, but that it is also rapidly growing in both popularity and uptake, say the SOAP team.