Open access publishing: Hypocrisy and confusion in geography

Debates about the possibilities and importance of open access publishing in academia are reaching a crucial stage. British universities are implementing 'author archiving', electronically storing their staff's outputs for online public access. At the same time, an increasing number of academics are calling for an overhaul of journal publishing processes – urging us to sign a petition to the European Commission in support of open access (EC Petition, 2007). Journal publishers are fighting a rearguard action in response. This ranges from making some of their content freely available, to creating complicated licence forms allowing authors to only post articles online several months (in some cases years) after publication; the chief concern of publishers is the potentially dramatic loss of revenue (Shepherd, 2007).