Open access: Nothing much new (or very little, anyway)

Abstract

Open Access has been around for many years. The only new developments of pressing interest are primarily related to UK university and research management bureaucracies. It is unlikely that the laws of copyright - which protect academic and other authors in various ways - will disappear, and certainly not overnight. Commercial publishers will find a business model that sustains them, and experimentation in novel forms of information dissemination will continue. Current rights in intellectual property are of course subject to critique and change, but internet access to information has not and will not suddenly dissolve the basic economics of information production and consumption.