From Free Software to Open Access

The open-access movement is gaining ground among researchers and scientists. A recent study showed that 20% of scholarly articles published in 2008 are available online for free, and the number is growing. It is cheaper for universities to pay for putting articles up on websites than for expensive journal subscriptions. Most open-access publishing uses free software platforms, notably OJS and DSpace. In common with free software, open standards, and Wikipedia, open access publishing shares the philosophy that it is inefficient to sell copies of information that have a zero or nearly zero marginal cost.