What is Open-Access Initiative (OAI)

This chapter discusses the rapid transition from paper to electronic distribution of scholarly journals and how this has led to open-access journals that make their content freely available over the Internet. It presents the practical and ethical arguments for providing open access to publicly funded research and scholarship and outlines a variety of economic models for operating these journals. There are hundreds of journals that are run on volunteer effort by a few people or even a single person. Journal management software that can streamline the peer-review process as well as other aspects of operating a journal can dramatically reduce the effort of operating these journals and allow them to flourish. The availability of high-quality, open source journal management software is playing an important role in facilitating the success of small volunteer-run, open-access journals.