Comment: Thinking About Open Access—Concretely

Abstract

In a recent review essay concerning open access (VALSINER, 2006), readers are confronted with some claims about the shifting of publication costs from the producer to the user without actually facilitating access to the products of scientific research. In the absence of concrete cases and case studies to substantiate the claims, I felt that the comments in their abstractness, while I sympathize with them, do not sufficiently advance our understanding of the issues involved in the open-access phenomenon. I am calling for a more differentiated, concrete method of dealing with open access and especially with the question of who is bearing the costs involved in publishing research results. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0602291