Oxford University Press has announced an OA initiative, Oxford Open. From today's press release: 'Commencing July 2005, it will offer an optional author-pays model to authors of accepted papers in a range of Oxford Journals titles. Oxford Journals has also amended its post-prints policy to be compliant with the latest National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy....Oxford Open will give published authors in participating Oxford Journals titles the option to pay for research articles to be freely available online immediately on publication. The open access charge for each article will be £1,500 or $2,800, with authors being given the option to pay this amount once their manuscript has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication. Discounted author charges of £800 or $1,500 will be available to authors from institutions that maintain a current online subscription. Authors from developing countries will also be eligible for discounted rates. The online subscription prices of participating journals will be adjusted for 2007 and subsequent years, according to how much content was paid for by authors and thus freely available online during the previous year....In addition, and with immediate effect, authors who publish with Oxford Journals are entitled to upload their accepted manuscript ("post-print") to institutional and centrally organized repositories (including PubMed Central), but must stipulate that public availability be delayed until 12 months after first online publication in the journal unless the paper is being published within Oxford Open, in which case the post-print may be deposited and made freely available immediately the article is accepted for publication.'
(PS: I commend OUP for undertaking the author-choice OA experiment for its journals. I'm less sanguine about the new policy to permit postprint archiving for non-paying authors only after a 12 month embargo. On the one hand, OUP journals did not previously permit postprint archiving at all, except perhaps with case-by-case permission. I also commend OUP for permitting it now, and for its continuing accommodation of preprint archiving. But on the other hand, an embargo on postprint archiving slows research, limits author impact, and limits journal impact. I'm sorry to see OUP lend its weight to this harmful new trend. Saying that the postprint archiving policy aligns with the NIH policy is not accurate. The NIH "strongly encourages" authors to authorize public access to their postprints "as soon as possible" after publication.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/04/2005 08:45:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
