October 10, 2005
AIP explores Open Access
American Institute of Physics announces Author SelectSM, a new open access initiative for 2005
MELVILLE, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 15, 2004 -- The American Institute of Physics announced today that it will offer on a trial basis an open-access publishing option to authors contributing to three AIP journals: Journal of Mathematical Physics, Review of Scientific Instruments, and Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science. The initiative has been named Author SelectSM.
Of the eleven journals published or co-published by AIP, these three titles were chosen for this experiment because they are important, high-impact journals that impose no page charges (other than a standard AIP charge for articles of excessive length). “This gives us a cleaner slate on which to judge whether the open-access model of up-front payment can provide suitable financial support for publishing in the physical sciences,” said AIP’s publisher, Dr. Thomas von Foerster.
Beginning on January 1, 2005, JMP, RSI, and Chaos will permit authors (or their funding agencies) to pay a $2000 fee prior to publication, for articles that will be freely available to anyone on the Web. Such articles will be highlighted in the online Table of Contents to indicate the articles’ “toll-free” availability online. During the peer-review process editors and referees will not be aware of whether an author has selected the open-access option. “The editors and their reliance on peer-review are the only things that determine acceptability for publication,” according to von Foerster.
AIP is familiar with the reactions among publishers and librarians to other models and experiments in open-access publishing. “In the so-called ‘author-paid’ model, some critics have focused on the amount of the author fee, but that’s something that will best be determined in the marketplace,” said Dr. Marc H. Brodsky, AIP executive director and CEO. “While it is not set unrealistically low, the AIP fee may well be adjusted over time based on author reaction and what we learn about the economics of free-to-the-user, article-level publishing. The main goals of this experiment are, first, to see if the idea of Open Access has any traction in the physical science community and, second, to see whether prepublication article payments produce enough revenue to allow us to hold down, reduce, or, ideally, eliminate library subscription prices.” While the Author Select experiment will have no effect on subscription rates for 2005, AIP plans to reduce future online subscription prices proportionately to the percent of open-access articles published. If a quarter of the articles published in a given year are open access, then a future year’s online subscription will cost 25% less than what it would cost otherwise.
AIP is already considered a “green” publisher, in that it allows authors to post e-prints to their personal or institutional websites. At the same time, Brodsky has been highly critical of some claims made by Open Access enthusiasts with respect to the desirability and economics of some forms of this new model. As the current chair of the executive council of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers, Brodsky has also been vocal in opposition to government-mandated publishing models.
Nonetheless, “we have no problem with Open Access per se,” said Brodsky. “Our interest is in supporting and maintaining the scientific record over time, which the subscription model has done remarkably well, at least until recently, when the growing amount of published research has collided with the diminishing ability of our best libraries to acquire that research.”
“As publishers, we have engaged in the debates over Open Access with librarians, government officials, and well-funded publisher-enthusiasts,” said von Foerster. “Now it’s time to let our authors join the debate and decide for themselves.” If the trial of Author Select is successful – meaning that a significant fraction of authors choose this option – then AIP plans to expand it to other journals.
Posted by dstern at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)
March 31, 2005
Open Access information site
In order to keep researchers up to date on the rapidly changing Open Access journal initiative, we have created an OA description page.
Posted by dstern at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
ACS and open access
The NIH encourages authors whose work it funds to submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central, the agency's free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. ACS has decided to take on the task of submission to PubMed Central on behalf of its authors, according to Robert D. Bovenschulte, president of the society's Publications Division. ACS will authorize PubMed Central to make the authors' versions of unedited manuscripts available to the public 12 months after the edited, final articles are published by ACS.
ACS's second policy experiment may have even more far-reaching consequences. ACS authors already had the right to distribute up to 50 free digital reprints by directing interested readers to a unique ACS website address for their final published articles. Now ACS will allow unlimited free access to published articles via these same author-directe online links by eliminating the limit one year after publication.'
For additional info see
http://www.chemistry.org/
Posted by dstern at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2005
Forum on the Future of Scholarly Publishing
Thursday, February 10, 2005
3:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Harkness Auditorium
Sterling Hall of Medicine
333 Cedar Street
Faculty, students and researchers across the campus will be interested in this discussion of the “open access” movement. The purpose of the forum is to discuss the future of research publishing and examine new scholarly publishing models. Open access to peer-reviewed, research articles and the dissemination of published research is an important issue for the entire academic community.
The forum will provide an opportunity to discuss the implications of these new publishing models with representatives from PubMed Central/NIH, the Public Library of Science, Yale faculty and the Yale University Library system.
Additional information (speakers, agenda, etc).
Posted by dstern at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
Open Access: a new model for journals
The library has created a page outlining some of the long-term issues for this newly heralded charging scheme.
The major concern of the community should be maintaining a revenue stream to support the peer review process as the OA reduces the number of organizations that will subsidize the existing publication network.
See the OA and alternative pricing models page for more complete information about this timely topic.
Posted by dstern at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)