Open Access for the Future

The European Union has announced that all scientific papers published there and based on publicly funded research will be freely available beginning in 2020. On Stoat, William M. Connolley compares the new rules with the copyright system utilized in the United States, writing "the mystery is why the UK, France, Germany, and hence the rest of the EU haven’t done this years back." On Confessions of a Science Librarian, John Dupuis considers the future of Elsevier, an academic publishing company based in Amsterdam that annually publishes hundreds of thousands of articles to the tune of $2,000,000,000 in revenue. As the scientific zeitgeist turns toward open access, Elsevier is positioning itself to maintain its profits by offering "research services." Dupuis writes, "They have no intention of surrendering their dominance. In a new, more open environment, they want to maintain that hegemony."