10 years of Malaria Journal: how did Open Access change publication patterns?

Excerpt

Fifteen years ago, most publications were paper-based, accessible only by subscription - be it a personal or a library subscription. By the late 1990s, this 'traditional' mode of access to scientific literature was about to change dramatically, as the result of a combination of events: the improvement of personal computer hardware (with computers becoming faster and cheaper every year), public access to internet and the world-wide web, online publishing and, most of all, the will of the scientific community to make research more easily available. This has led to the development of Open Access (OA). This revolution in publishing has given developing countries an opportunity to have access to the latest scientific literature, by-passing the need for libraries, which they could not afford. …