The economics of medical publishing are broken and the industry is about to enter a period of radical transformation. The drum is beating louder and louder for scientific journals published with publically funded tax dollars to be freely available to clinicians and patients alike. In most cases, authors of medical papers have no idea how much money is being made off their free labor and their effort to advance medicine while advancing their career. The jig is up.
“There is a widespread feeling that the journal publishers who have mediated this exchange for the past century or more are becoming an impediment to it.”
The final line of a recent article from The Economist sums things up best:
“A revolution, then, has begun. Technology permits it; researchers and politicians want it. If scientific publishers are not trembling in their boots, they should be.”
Read the entire post entitled: Brought to book; Academic journals face a radical shake-up.
The Cureus Blog 