Open access to Construction IT research articles – developments over the past 25 years

The Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon), was founded in 1996, using the new innovative open access business model enabled by the World wide web. A quarter century later Open Access (OA) journals have established themselves in all fields of science, in particular in biomedicine, so that around a fifth of all high quality peer reviewed articles are currently published in OA journals. In building and construction there are half a dozen active full OA journals, although ITcon remains the only one dedicated specifically to construction IT research. The development of OA has been slower than anticipated in the early years. An analysis using Michael Porter’s five forces model of the competitive environment of scholarly publishing helps to highlight the reasons for this. Particularly important as a barrier to change is the strong emphasis in academic evaluations on impact factors, which favors old established journals. Despite such hurdles OA continuously grows in importance and pioneering journals like ITcon have helped to pave the way.