The first makes use of surveys and interviews to examine scholars' perceptions and opinions of the scholarly communication system. It concludes with a discussion of avenues for further research.ĪPPROACHES TO STUDYING SCHOLARS' USE OF THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATUREĬurrent research on the use of the scientific literature follows two main methodological approaches. The paper first reviews the impact of free access on the research practices of scholars in developed and developing nations, then examines the use of freely available biomedical literature by health professionals and the lay public. Although “open access” is the usual term for scholarly work that is freely accessible online, the term “free access” is used here, since open access is often understood to include issues of copyright, archiving, funding, and social justice that are not addressed in this discussion.
It also focuses on the natural sciences, since most of the research on free access has dealt with fields such as the biomedical, physical, and computer sciences. The discussion deals only with the scholarly literature, thereby excluding studies of online newspapers, magazines, and trade publications.
It does not evaluate the extent to which the freely available scientific literature is technically accessible, indexed, cataloged, or available for potential use. The review assesses impact in terms of reading, citation, and related forms of use. This paper evaluates that claim, reviewing the current literature and showing the ways in which free access has (or has not) had an impact on scholars, clinicians, and the general public in developed and developing nations. A principal argument in support of open access publishing rests on the belief that the subscription-based publishing model has produced a crisis of accessibility to the scientific literature.
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