Open Access News

We are pleased to report that July 2005 saw the launch of our new Open Access option, part of the Oxford Open initiative. Bioinformatics authors can now choose to publish their work ‘open access’ in an established, high-impact journal, under what we believe is a sustainable publication model. The decision of whether to pay for open access is made by the corresponding author upon acceptance (importantly this decision is kept completely separate from the editorial review process). If a Bioinformatics author chooses to pay for the Open Access option, his or her paper will be made freely available online immediately; if an author does not choose the option his or her paper will be made freely available 12 months after publication. Authors choosing to publish under the Open Access model are also entitled to make their article freely available in institutional and subject-based repositories immediately upon publication....Our experiment follows a large-scale survey of the bioinformatics community in the latter part of 2004, to which over 900 responses were received. As part of the survey we asked the respondents to state which model they would prefer to see Bioinformatics adopt in the next two years: 39% preferred an optional model of open access where authors could choose whether or not to pay for open access; 38% preferred a mandatory model of open access funded by author charges; 20% preferred a non-open access model and 3% did not respond. In separate questions a similar number of respondents (60%) said that they would support an optional and a mandatory model of open access for Bioinformatics. We concluded that there is clear support for the concept of open access amongst a large sector of the bioinformatics community. However we also received concerns about the affordability of the author charges required and the long-term sustainability of such a model, and we noted that there are mixed feelings about the desirability and importance of immediate open access primarily funded by author charges....Unusually among such optional models, the Oxford Open model links the optional Open Access charge to institutional subscriptions. Corresponding authors based at institutions with online access to the current content of Bioinformatics are eligible for reduced, optional Open Access charges....Early results show that this model is proving attractive to a number of Bioinformatics authors --at the time of writing this editorial 32 papers have been published under an open access model in Bioinformatics since July. As an important part of the experiment, Oxford Journals is also undertaking research with the Library and Information Statistics Unit (LISU) based at Loughborough University, UK, to investigate the effect of open access on online usage and citation patterns as we believe this will help us and authors to make informed decisions. We are hopeful that this optional model will be attractive to authors --giving them freedom of choice-- and that it will prove useful to users (open access articles are clearly indicated as such on the online contents page and can be freely re-used for research and educational purposes). If the model is successful it would allow Bioinformatics to make a financially viable move to full open access.