Stimulating Debate

One of the goals we had when we launched Open Access Now was to stimulate debate about Open Access within the scientific community and to provide a forum for an exchange of views. We have been delighted to receive a steady stream of emails containing feedback and comments.

A particularly interesting contribution came from Etienne Joly, an immunologist from Toulouse, France, who included a proposal for a new system of evaluating the impact of a scientific article and the use of such evaluation to determine the amount the author pays in publishing charges. Here, we publish the beginning of his letter and the full text can be found in the forum section of this website.

The views expressed are exclusively Dr Joly's, and though the model he proposes is different from that developed by BioMed Central, we felt it merited a larger audience and hope that it will initiate debate.

The Open Access future is not yet clearly defined and will benefit enormously from proposals and suggestions from authors and readers. Now is the time to contribute your ideas - we welcome your comments.