User:DrTh0r/sandbox

Need for open access electronic scholarly journals

Problem Statement: Academic libraries now spend more money for subscriptions to electronic databases than any other single budget item. This cost exceeds both the amount paid for salaries and acquisition of books. The primary contents of the electronic journals are scholarly articles written by academic authors. These academics in almost all cases are employed at institutions funded by either taxpayers or tuition payers. Even a small liberal arts college is paying tens or hundreds of thousands to purchase access to works authored by their collective facility. When this expense is multiplied by the number academic libraries worldwide it is possible that the current electronic journal system is costing tuition payers and tax payers $100 million annually.

Proposed solution: If the Wikipedia Foundation were to support a project such as Wiki Journal it might quickly receive popular support. To be successful the process of scholarly research, editing, and peer review would need to remain intact. This process would be different than the current collaborative editing process on Wikipedia but would solve a very significant problem. The first step would be to allow direct publishing and open free access to the published material. Next steps might include hyperlinking citations within scholarly journals to the source material and other changes which could potentially significantly improve the process of research.

Benefits: Taxpayers, academic authors, academic libraries, and students all potentially could benefit from a well-developed Wiki Journal tool. Any solution that could lower the world wide cost of education and access to knowledge by $100 million annually is at least an idea worth exploring.

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DrTh0r (talk) 21:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC)