Open but Not Free — Publishing in the 21st Century

...Open-access publishing has gained traction over the past 10 years because of the success of the PLOS and BioMed Central families of journals. The annual volume of articles published in open-access journals has increased from 20,702 in 2000 to 340,130 in 2011 — accounting for 17% of all articles published in 2011.4 These articles were published in 6713 journals with full and immediate open access; 49% of them were published in journals requiring an author fee. The growth in open-access publishing has encouraged professional societies, commercial publishers, and even funders to launch new open-access journals. Mehr