NIEHS conducts ongoing review of all its research, training, and communications programs and has recently determined that it is now appropriate to consider phasing out Institute sponsorship of this journal. NIEHS has not reached a final decision about potential privatization of EHP nor has an implementation plan for carrying out such a decision been developed. Should such a decision be reached, it is our goal to implement it in a manner that will be least disruptive to the field and to authors, reviewers, editorial board, staff, and subscribers. The current request for comment poses a series of questions around core elements that may comprise an implementation plan for privatization of EHP. These elements include: (1) Feasibility of privatizing EHP, (2) a business plan for continuation of the journal, (3) a timeline and plan for transfer of responsibility, (4) an editorial policy plan, and (5) continued online access....
EHP is read in nearly every country of the world. EHP has an impact factor of 3.93 and an Immediacy Index of 1.20, ranking the journal second of 132 environmental sciences journals and fifth of 90 public, environmental, and occupational health journals. As a full open-access journal, EHP provides XML-formatted content to the digital archive Pubmed Central. EHP also has partnerships with Medscape and JSTOR.org (an organization that maintains an archive of scholarly journal) to facilitate access and distribution of EHP's content. Electronic submission and review are the norm for the 1,200 manuscripts that EHP receives annually, and the rejection rate is about 80%. EHP publishes all articles within 24 hours of acceptance on its [web site] as EHP-in-Press articles. These articles are completely citable using CrossRef's Digital Object Identifier system. The Web site is visited by approximately 150,000 unique visitors every month.
My recommendation: It's less important for EHP to remain in the hands of the NIEHS than for it to remain OA. If the NIEHS privatizes the journal, then it should take special care to place it with a publisher or institution that agrees to carry out the NIH commitment to, and serve the public interest in, unrestricted public access to peer-reviewed science.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/22/2005 08:25:00 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.
