Oh, what a wonderful year!

The year 2003 will probably be recorded as a turning point for the Open Access movement. We launched Open Access Now halfway through the year as we sensed a need for a forum for debate and discussion about the changes in the scientific publishing industry. Over the last six months we have brought you a range of news and feature articles and have worked hard to keep up with the rapid pace of progress in Open Access.

Last year, several of the most significant of the world's biomedical funding institutions threw themselves whole-heartedly behind Open Access publishing and pledged to support researchers who published in Open Access journals or Open Archives. "The switch to Open Access publishing is inevitable", prophesied Gerry Rubin in the first issue of Open Access Now. Rubin is a vice-president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which hosted the initiative to establish the Bethesda Principles, the first widely-accepted definition of Open Access. Since then, HHMI has been joined by many funding agencies including the Wellcome Trust, the largest British medical charity. And Germany's Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science led the meeting that resulted in the establishment of the Berlin Declaration, which has subsequently been signed by many European institutions including the major French government funding agencies.

BioMed Central welcomed the arrival of new Open Access publishers, notably the Public Library of Science (PLoS), whose new journal PLoS Biology hopes to position itself alongside BioMed Central's Journal of Biology as a top-tier Open Access journal for excellent research. PLoS has endeavored to increase the awareness of Open Access across the scientific community and was instrumental in generating the publicity that lead to the Sabo Bill in the US Congress calling for all government-funded research to be exempt from copyright protection.

The persuasive nature of the Open Access model has driven several traditional publishers to explore how they might transition to Open Access. Notably UK-based publishers Oxford University Press and the Company of Biologists announced that they will be experimenting with author-pays models as an option for authors in the new year.

Over the last six months we have aimed to bring you articles covering a wide range of issues related to Open Access. We have interviewed key individuals from major funding institutions, libraries, and publishers about their insights into Open Access publishing. We have also discussed the impact of Open Archives and the effects of Open Access on data mining and research in the developing world. There are many issues we have not yet covered and we welcome suggestions for topics that you would like to see discussed in the months to come.

Open Access Now will continue to keep readers up-to-date about news and initiatives, and to educate researchers about the issues and the players involved. You can play your part by publicizing Open Access journals on campus and submitting your manuscripts for publication. We are optimistic that 2004 will be an even more exciting year for Open Access.

Jonathan Weitzman
Editor