Leading the way for open access research

The movement for publishing research online emerged more than 25 years ago. One of the leaders of that movement was cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad. In an influential paper, Harnad (1991) described computer-mediated communication as a “fourth revolution” (p. 39) in the means of production of knowledge, matched historically only by the onset of language, writing, and print. Harnad pointed in particular to the power of the Internet for rapid and open diffusion of scientific research, breaking through the limitations in access, speed, and interactivity of the notoriously sluggish academic publishing industry. He also described a new online publication called Psycoloquy, which he considered a model for future “electronic journals” (p. 47).