Open access publishing and the future of scientific communication - Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders

Abstract:  Under the ‘old’ system, you wrote an article, usually with co-authors, sent it to a journal with a high impact factor and waited a few weeks to see what revisions were required. Then, a few months later, your article would appear in print, hopefully, displayed on your local medical library's shelves for all to read. Shortly afterwards, the article would appear online, cited by PubMed or Google Scholar. A generous publisher might make the article free for everyone to read or download. Failing that, your local university library would (hopefully) maintain a subscription to the relevant journal, and your article could be downloaded for free. If you did not have University library access or you did not pay for the annual subscription, then you could write to the corresponding author and ask for a copy or find a site e.g. Sci-Hub, where copyright laws are ignored and request a download that way. With the traditional system, the payers were the university, journal subscribers, and advertisers. More recently, some publishers have offered selected articles for free, and presumably, they compensated for their potential loss of revenue via advertising and publication charges.