[长难句突破]

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects.

主体句式:The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that...

结构分析:这个句子的主语是一个名称非常长的机构,因此是句子显得臃肿,其实可以完全忽略这个部分,而关注says后面的实质性内容。

Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it.

主体句式:Other models exist that are hybrids of these three.

结构分析:这个句子在主句后面以such as来引出一个证明"hybrids of these three"的例子,即"delayed open-access",其后where引导的定语从句用来具体说明前面提出的这个名词,最后一个逗号后面的状语对前文作补充说明。

[全文译文]

It used to be so straightforward. A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the authors' names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review. Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal.

No longer. The Internet-and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it- is making access to scientific results a reality. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has just issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavor.

The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects. They publish more than 1.2 million articles each year in some 16,000 journals.

This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives, where organizations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it. All this could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers.

以前这一切都是那么直接。一组研究人员在同一个实验室共同工作,他们会把工作成果写成报告寄给一家刊物。这家刊物的编辑会抹去文章的作者和所在机构,然后把文章寄给这些研究人员的同行们进行审阅。编辑会根据得到的审阅评论而决定是否发表这篇文章。因此,刊物的出版商拥有版权,而寻求知识的研究者们还得订购这本刊物。

然而一切已经不同了。网络--那些提供资金的机构也在施压,他们质疑为什么商业运作的刊物能够通过限制政府投资的研究得到其资源而赚钱--使得阅读科学研究的成果变为现实。经济合作和发展组织(OECD)最近发布的一篇报告就描述了这一点所带来的深远影响。这份报告由澳大利亚维多利亚大学的John Houghton和经合组织的Graham Vickery共同撰写,其内容使得那些到目前为止利润丰厚的出版商们都非常汗颜。但事情还不仅仅止于此。它还发出了一个信号,即当前科学研究中的一个重要因素即将发生改变。

知识的价值以及在研究领域的公共投资能否取得较高的回报,在部分上取决于研究的成果是否能够得到广泛的流通、以及人们是否能够比较容易地得到这些研究成果。这是一个很大的产业。在美国,科研出版市场的核心部分每年的产值为70亿-110亿美元。科学技术和医学出版商国际协会指出全球有2000家专门负责科研出版的出版商。他们每年在16000本期刊上发表的文章超过了120万篇。

这个现象现在正在发生变化。根据经合组织的报告,约有75%的学术刊物现在已实现了在线阅读。崭新的产业模型正在浮现,报告的作者总结出了三个主要的模型。第一种是大订单模型,即机构订阅者通过签订网站通行协议并付钱的方式可以在网上阅读一批刊物的文章题目。第二种是开放式出版模型,这种方式的典型特点就是要求作者(或其雇主)付钱发表文章。最后一种是开放式档案模型,即一些组织、比如大学或者国际实验室建立和维护的一些机构数据库。其它的模型都是对这三种模型的不同混合,比如延期开放式模型就是指一些期刊在文章发表的前六个月只允许付钱的订阅者阅读,此后任何人都可以免费阅读。这些都将改变传统的同行审阅模式,至少对于文章的发表来说。