Health sciences librarians work within a complex environment, one that quickly adopted access to electronic resources. The open access movement evolved as an alternative to traditional publishing as prices for STM e-journals steadily increased, but it also raised issues and concerns for authors within the more traditional biomedical culture. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access policy provided an opportunity to support researchers' compliance with the policy, while advocating for open access and author rights. As an outgrowth of the NIH policy, health sciences libraries have promoted open access through a variety of activities within their academic health centers.
This multi-part bibliographic essay identifies the most relevant issues about the publishing of scholarly electronic journals: Access, Cataloging and Indexing, Pricing, Archiving, and Licensing. Each of these issues merits careful consideration in its own right; however, as these essays demonstrate, the issues are vast, complex, and very interdependent. These sections ask questions such as: Who will take the responsibility for archiving? Will data remain unaltered after publication? Will libraries still have access to archival copies after canceling a subscription? The sections below highlight the current debates on each topic and provide references to sources of further study.
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