HIV Medicine 2006, a medical textbook freely available over the Internet, will be downloaded more than 50,000 times in a year. At a cost of 52 € per copy, global savings (for those who otherwise would have bought the book) or added value (for those who would not have bought it) will exceed 2,500,000 €. The free Internet publication of Influenza Report 2006 resulted in comparable savings and/or added value - multiple translations are under way, more than doubling the impact.

These two examples demonstrate that the economic implications of open-access publishing are delightfully fascinating. If medical textbooks of an average price of 50 € per copy are downloaded an average 50,000 times a year, producing and freely distributing 100 medical textbooks could save doctors and interested lay people 250,000,000 € per year. A vertiginous prospective.

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Voilà qui parle de soi.

Source : Free Medical Information.