Editorial - Open access: To be or not to be?

Very few of us will disagree that there is a crisis in the availability of scholarly journals. Skyrocketing costs coupled with a lack of public funding have conspired to make journals disappear from most libraries. Even large academic institutes are becoming wary about using their meagre budgets for print journals with high price tags. Scientists, especially those working in cash-strapped developing countries are at a disadvantage of not being able to access international research. The emergence of the Internet led to most journals jumping with alacrity on to the so called online access bandwagon. The initial euphoria over this move ended as readers had to pay for both the print edition and the online version with enhanced pricing. The emergence of Open Access publishing and its application to biomedical literature is viewed by some as a panacea to the pricing monopoly that is being enjoyed by a select number of large commercial publishing conglomerates