Review Of Open Access In Economics

Ever since BioMed Central (BMC) published its first free online article on July 19th 2000, the Open Access movement has made significant progress, so much so that many different stakeholders now see 100% Open Access to research as inevitable in the near future. Some are already extrapolating from recent growth trends that Open Access will take 90% of the overall article share by just 2020 (Lewis, 2012). Another recent analysis shows that during 2011 the number of Open Access articles published was ~340,000 spread over ~6,700 different journals which is about 17% of the overall literature space (1.66 million articles) for that year (Laakso & Bjork, 2012).

Perhaps because of the more obvious lifesaving benefits, biomedical research in particular has seen the largest growth in Open Access – patients & doctors alike can gain truly lifesaving benefit from easy, cost-free, Open Access to research. Those very same doctors and patients may have difficulty accessing the latest toll access-only research; any delay or impediment to accessing up-to-date medical knowledge can have negative, even fatal consequences:

[The following is from 'The impact of open access upon public health. PLoS Medicine (2006) 3:e252+' illustrating how barriers to knowledge access have grave consequences]