www.oksociety.org - Open Knowledge Society

http://www.oksociety.org/

It is a common saying that knowledge grows by sharing. Scientists and scholars have been sharing their knowledge from the very beginning. They are doing so without seeking any immediate monetary gains. Sharing of knowledge avoids 'reinventing the wheel' and initiates genesis of new knowledge.
Scholarly journals are considered to be the main carrier of quality scholarly knowledge. Unfortunately academic publishing has seen commercial interests taking over the scholarly interests. In majority of the cases public money is utilized in research projects. Scientists and scholars working on these projects produce articles containing research results. These are sent to scholarly journals for publication. Journals refers their articles to their peers for quality control under a process called peer-review. These articles carrying nascent knowledge are expected to generate new cycles of knowledge. However commercial interests and high subscription costs prevent access to knowledge pool generated by researchers, scientists and scholars.
In the pre-Internet era, commercial academic publishers were indispensable as they had the capital, marketing and distribution network. However in this Internet age, an alternative scholarly communication model can be established (has been tested and found to be successful). This model is called Open Access Publishing. Open Knowledge Society aims to provide a platform for the people working for the cause of open access to come together for promoting access to scholarly knowledge.
For those who are new to Open Access:
Open Access to scholarly information can be achieved by two methods:
Open Access Journals
Open Archives
Open Access Journals: Open Access Journals publish articles like conventional journal but are accessible in full without any fee or subscription charges.
Open Archives: These are publicly accessible online repositories where the authors or their representatives or other right holders upload their pre-print or post-print articles. These could be subject based or institutional repositories.