Carl Phillips, Introducing article-processing charges and inviting "detailed methods sections" articles, Epidemiologic perspectives & innovations, June 7, 2005. An editorial. Excerpt: 'Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations (EP&I) is published by BioMed Central (BMC), an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed research is Open Access -- that it is universally and freely available online to everyone and its authors retain copyright. In order to fund the publication of the journal while fulfilling our commitment to make all content of EP&I free to readers, the publisher and editors of the journal have introduced an article-processing charge. Starting April 2005, authors of articles accepted for publication will be asked to pay a charge of £330 (currently approximately US$625 or €480). There is no charge if a submission is rejected. Authors at the many BMC member institutions receive an exemption from the fee....Waiver requests, particularly from authors with financial hardship, will be considered on a case-by-case basis....All articles are available for free to anyone with internet access. Readers are not limited by what their library can afford, and can easily access articles via web-based searches (using research databases or general web search engines), increasingly the most popular method for finding publications. This easier availability has been shown to make articles more highly cited. It also fulfills the requirements that are increasingly being imposed by funders to make the products of their funding publicly available....The online publishing model, combined with the mission of EP&I, allows us to provide a forum for articles that are unlikely to be published in paper journals [because of their length]....We welcome submissions that report in detail the methods that produced previously published results, or details of methods in advance of the publication of results....Since the purpose of this type of article is to provide enough detail to scrutinize or replicate a method, authors should include any detail that required a decision about study protocol or analysis method.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/10/2005 10:15:00 AM.
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.
