Oxford Journals share evidence-based open access results with the
community

The impact of open access for publishers, authors, and readers was the
subject of a one day conference held in London last week, organised by
Oxford Journals. Findings presented from three studies conducted by LISU
<http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dils/lisu/index.html>, CIBER
<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ciber/ciber.php>, and Oxford Journals
<www.oxfordjournals.org>, gave researchers a rare opportunity to view
how the open access business model is working in practice. 

This event marks a continued commitment by Oxford Journals towards
responsible experimentation with open access models, and an equal
commitment to disseminating this information. Over 90 delegates from
across the international academic spectrum attended the event, including
researchers, librarians, publishers, editors, and representatives of
several scholarly organizations. 

"Until recently there has been a lack of data to support whether an open
access model would result in cost effective dissemination of research,"
commented Martin Richardson, Managing Director, Oxford Journals, who
also chaired the event. He continued:

"The event has received strong support from across the scholarly
community, for presenting hard evidence into the effects of open access,
and also for enabling others to share their experiences of open access.
We hope that by making the results of our experiments public we can help
to foster a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of
open access and subscription-based business models."

The day focussed on the preliminary findings from three key experiments*
relating to Oxford Journals open access content. Findings were presented
by Claire Saxby, Senior Editor, Oxford Journals; Claire Creaser, LISU;
and David Nicholas, CIBER. Some of the key findings included:

*	The importance of search engines in driving up usage
*	The relationship of open access driving up usage of non-open
access 	content in the same journal
*	Changes in user behaviour for abstract and full-text usage
*	The varying standpoints of authors on open access.

Presentations from Oxford Journals, LISU, and CIBER, are now available
online <http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/Presentation%20slides>. 

A full report of the findings will be freely available online from the
Oxford Journals website later this month. 

For further information on Oxford Journals' open access experiments,
click here <http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/>  

For further information on the Oxford open access workshop, click here
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.html> 

* Oxford currently has three separate open access models: one full open
access journal, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), optional open access for
49 journals in the Oxford Open initiative, and sponsored open access for
Journal of Experimental Botany (JXB), and Evidence based Complementary
and Alternative Medicine (eCAM).

END

For further information please contact:
Mithu Mukherjee
Assistant Communications Manager
Oxford Journals

+44(0)1865 354471
[log in to unmask]

Notes for Editors

The Oxford Journals open access workshop took place on 5 June 2006 at
the Institute of Physics conference Centre, 76 Portland Place, London

A full conference schedule, plus an overview of the presentations, and
access to presentation slides, is available online:
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.html> 

Oxford University Press (OUP), a department of the University of Oxford,
is the world's largest and most international university press. Founded
in 1478, it currently publishes more than 4,500 new books a year, has a
presence in over fifty countries, and employs some 3,700 people
worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse
publishing programme that includes scholarly works in all academic
disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children's
books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business
books, dictionaries and reference books, and journals. Read more about
OUP <http://www.oup.com/about/> 

Oxford Journals, a Division of OUP, publishes over 180 journals covering
a broad range of subject areas, two-thirds of which are published in
collaboration with learned societies and other international
organizations. The collection contains some of the world's most
prestigious titles, including Nucleic Acids Research, JNCI (Journal of
the National Cancer Institute), Brain, Human Reproduction, English
Historical Review, and the Review of Financial Studies. Read more about
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