This event marks a continued commitment by Oxford Journals towards responsible experimentation with open access models, and an equal commitment to disseminating this information. Over 90 delegates from across the international academic spectrum attended the event, including researchers, librarians, publishers, editors, and representatives of several scholarly organizations.
"Until recently there has been a lack of data to support whether an open access model would result in cost effective dissemination of research," commented Martin Richardson, Managing Director, Oxford Journals, who also chaired the event. He continued:
"The event has received strong support from across the scholarly community, for presenting hard evidence into the effects of open access, and also for enabling others to share their experiences of open access. We hope that by making the results of our experiments public we can help to foster a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of open access and subscription-based business models."
The day focussed on the preliminary findings from three key experiments relating to Oxford Journals open access content . Findings were presented by Claire Saxby, Senior Editor, Oxford Journals; Claire Creaser, LISU; and David Nicholas, CIBER. Some of the key findings included:
- The importance of search engines in driving up usage
- The relationship of open access driving up usage of non-open access content in the same journal
- Changes in user behaviour for abstract and full-text usage
- The varying standpoints of authors on open access.
Presentations from Oxford Journals, LISU, and CIBER, are now available online.
A full report of the findings will be freely available online from the Oxford Journals website later this month.
For further information please contact:
Mithu Mukherjee
Assistant Communications Manager
Oxford Journals
+44(0)1865 354471
mithu.mukherjee@oxfordjournals.org
Notes for Editors
The Oxford Journals open access workshop took place on 5 June 2006 at the Institute of Physics conference Centre, 76 Portland Place, London
A full conference schedule, plus an overview of the presentations, and access to presentation slides, is available online
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