Open Access Publishing is the free distribution of research, whether it is as a pre-print (working paper) or a peer-reviewed article. Since the creation of the web, more and more journal are choosing open access as their business model. One of them was recently Economic Analysis and Policy, published by the Economic Society of Australia (Queensland). To celebrate this, EAP has just published a special issue dedicated to the Economics of Open Access Publishing. Articles are written by economists discussing their experience with open access as well as by others involved in open access publishing. They cover the transition the publishing industry is currently undergoing, the surprisingly low cost of publishing an open access journal, the impact of open access and various open source aspects of the open access.
- Introduction, by Christian Zimmermann
- The Stratified Economics of Open Access, by John Willinsky
- But what have you done for me lately? Commercial Publishing, Scholarly Communication, and Open-Access, by John P. Conley and Myrna Wooders
- Publishing an E-Journal on a Shoe String: Is It a Sustainable Project?, by Piero Cavaleri. Michael Keren, Giovanni B. Ramello and Vittorio Valli
- Open Access Models and their Implications for the Players on the Scientific Publishing Market, by Steffen Bernius, Matthias Hanauske, Wolfgang König and Berndt Dugall
- Open Access Economics Journals and the Market for Reproducible Economic Research, by B.D. McCullough
- Estimating the Potential Impacts of Open Access to Research Findings, by John Houghton and Peter Sheehan
- The Economics of Open Bibliographic Data Provision, by Thomas Krichel and Christian Zimmermann
The RePEc Blog 
If something is done Open Access, is Peer Review still necessary? How can you publish (be it Open Access or printed) a scholarly piece without Peer Review?
If there is a way around Peer Review (in its current status), please tell me!
With the Internet and in particular the rise of Open Access, one can indeed think about new ways of conducting peer review. We have discussed some in previous posts on the RePEc blog:
New peer review systems
Further thoughts on “New peer review systems”
More on peer review and blogging
I would also like to see research more discussed on blogs, which you could understand as a new peer review system. To encourage this, I have created the Econ Academics blog.