The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship

Emerging Infectious Diseases helped pioneer open-access publishing by launching free online and print editions simultaneously in 1995. A decade later, perhaps half of the 50,000 scholarly journals are available online; however, access to the contents generally requires a subscription. Although many journals are experimenting with enhanced-access models, such as offering open access to a small selection of articles (e.g., Lancet) or making archived articles freely available 6–12 months after publication (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine), only ≈20% of all research articles are open access, and many of these are available only as self-archived manuscripts on authors' personal websites. Meanwhile, journal subscription rates continue to escalate, strapping library budgets and restricting circulation.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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