Editorial
Keywords: Open systems, Public ownership, Publishing
Open access is perhaps the most important example of how technology has linked all aspects of the generation and access to information. This has benefits for some and threats for others. It is certainly one of the threats faced by paid-for document delivery; INIST, the French document supplier has shown good strategic sense by developing links with the open access movement(see Joachim Schopfel's article in the last issue of ILDS and the Literature review in this issue.) Peter Suber, one of its most articulate advocates, wonders in his current newsletter, whether the "skipping point"has arrived. He lifts the phrase from an investment report by Paribas on Elsevier which is positive about the development of open access. It concludes that it will have a detrimental affect on STM publishers such as Elsevier. Among the many interesting features of the report is its estimate that the academic community could save 40 per cent of its current serials costs by moving to open access. As a consequence of the report, Elsevier's shares fell by a small amount. As Peter observes, it is not that the report states that Elsevier will disappear but the open access has a credible business model. Indeed, as Jan Velterop remarked at a seminar in London in November: "Open access can be nicely profitable" although whether "nicely" equates to the 35 per cent rate of return by Elsevier is open to question. Certainly, the academic community is supporting open access driven partly by the ethics of "free"access to at least publicly funded research but also by the continuing real increases in the costs of serials.
Perhaps Paribas underestimates the agility of commercial publishers. They have formidable strengths and could themselves adopt the open access model. Once again, we will see reform, not revolution, with a gradual transition to an intermediate state where different business models co-exist. ILDS will carry an article on open access in 2004.
In future issues …
Also commissioned for 2004 are articles on end-user access and searching by a practitioner; "e" developments at the British Library Document Supply Centre; LAMDA, the document supply co-operative; Fretwell Downing Informatics,the innovative software developer for ILL/docdel systems; developments in public library resource sharing in the UK; e-books and their impact on ILL; copyright and document delivery; CrossRef, the publisher's answer for document delivery and TU Delft, the Dutch document supplier, and much much more. In addition Mary Jackson, from ARL, will be contributing a regular column to the journal. So it looks like a bumper 2004!
The ILDS conference
The Editor attended the 8th ILDS conference in Canberra, Australia. It was an outstanding success. A total of 250 delegates and speakers attended, from 22 countries. The quality of the 26 papers was excellent and ILDS will be publishing some of them during 2004. The highlight for the Editor was Dennis Massie's hilarious presentation of the restructuring at RLG which involved switching off access to customers to the central server on a specified date."Nobody is going to die" they intoned in the office as the date drew ever-nearer. The Editor took this to heart as he watched his home computer collapse under the weight of an undetected virus two days before the deadline for this issue.
Mike McGrath
Plate 1Delegates to the 8th IFLA ILDS International Conference, Canberra, October 2003
