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Many researchers opposed to online open-access journals base their argument on a fear that the advantages of traditional journals — from peer review to copyright protection —  will be lost.


In this article, Peter Suber of the Philosophy Department of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, United States, shows that this is by no means inevitable. He discusses eight major concerns.


Regarding peer review, Suber cites PubMed Central, the Public Library of Science and other major players as advocating free access, not a loss of quality control. He shows that a loss in professional quality won’t happen, as scientists of great calibre are already working for open-access journals. And he makes a compelling case for the other concerns, from the preservation of articles, to prestige and profit margins.


Link to article in the Journal of Biology