At 03:18 PM 1/4/2003 -0500, Jim Till wrote [in part]:
I've just been reading Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point: How Little
Things Can Make a Big Difference" (Little, Brown & Co., 2002 edition).
The "Tipping Point" is "that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social
behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire".
I hope that the establishment of the BMC and PLoS journals will be seen,
in retrospect, as "magic moments" when open access to the biological and
biomedical research literature began to spread "like wildfire".
Jim Till
University of Toronto
Jim: I share your hope. The launch of the PLoS journals is definitely a
new milestone for open access. I don't know whether they will bring us to
the tipping point, but I'm sure they will bring us closer.
BTW, I argued in FOSN for 8/8/02, <http://makeashorterlink.com/?W5B012CD1>
(second story),
[also http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2212.html]
that open-access eprint archiving --as opposed to open-access journals--
had reached its tipping point. I provided six months' worth of evidence
to show that its adoption and endorsement are accelerating.
Peter Suber
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Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy
Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374
Email [email protected]
Web http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
Editor, Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
Editor, FOS News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
