Introduction; open access in the social and political sciences : threat or opportunity?

This article introduces a Symposium which brings together the academic and publishing industry in two key countries (the UK and the US) to analyse and assess the implications of Open Access (OA) journal publishing in the social and political sciences, as well as its different formats and developments to date. With articles by three academics (all involved in academic associations) and three publishers, the Symposium represents an exchange of views which help each of the two sectors understand better the perspectives of the other. More generally, the Symposium aims to raise the visibility of OA amongst the academic community whose general awareness and knowledge of OA – compared with publishers – has been rather limited to date