Open Access News

From August 14th 2006 authors submitting articles to selected Cambridge Journals will be able to make their articles freely available to everyone, immediately on publication. Building on the success of Breast Cancer Online, the first Cambridge Open Access project, and Neuron Glia Biology, which provides Open Access after 6-12 months, Cambridge Open Option introduces a new Open Access model to a further 15 journals from the Cambridge list.

Gavin Swanson, STM Editor-in-Chief at Cambridge Journals said: "I've been involved in the Open Access world for some time and the launch of Cambridge Open Option is the result of a great deal of painstaking research into best practice. I'm confident that we have a robust model that will benefit both authors and researchers equally. We're hoping that this will become a major part of our journals publishing in the future and that it will help us give greater access to the results of scientific research reported in our journals."

Once their paper has been accepted for publication, authors can choose whether or not to make it freely available to everyone on publication via Cambridge Journals Online (CJO). In this way, all of the editorial decision processes are maintained in a neutral way. The journal's Editor and reviewers will not know that the paper is to be included in the program until it is accepted.

All Cambridge asks in order to provide this service is that the author, or their institution or funding body, pays a fee to cover costs associated with the publication process, from peer-review of the submitted manuscript, through the copy-editing and typesetting, to online-hosting of the definitive version of the published article. The charge that will be applied for each article is £1500/$2700. The costs associated with producing printed issues are not included.

Papers will continue to be made available in both print and online versions; the only difference is that Open Access articles will be freely available online....

It is anticipated that the subscription prices of the participating journals will be adjusted in the future to take into account the impact of the Open Access publishing model. The level of change will depend on the uptake of the Cambridge Open Option by authors. Any subscription price changes will occur on a title by title basis....

Cambridge Open Option encompasses the following journals published by Cambridge University Press:
Journal of Agricultural Science
Biofilms
Cardiology in the Young
Development and Psychopathology
Experimental Agriculture
Expert Reviews in Molecular Medicine
Geological Magazine
Genetical Research
Epidemiology and Infection
Laser and Particle Beams
Journal of Plasma Physics
Psychological Medicine
Journal of Tropical Ecology
Visual Neuroscience
Zygote

Cambridge University Press Journals allow authors to post their articles in personal and departmental web pages and in institutional repositories. Authors can immediately post their own versions of articles (as submitted but prior to editorial input from Cambridge University Press) on their personal or departmental web pages or institutional repositories. They can also post the full pdf version of the published article 12 months after first publication. The full terms and conditions relating to institutional repository and author hosting are provided to all authors contributing to Cambridge Journals.

Comments.

1. I hope you're counting. This is the third OA hybrid program introduced in August, and August isn't even two weeks old yet. The first two were BMJ Unlocked (August 3; see my comments) and Wiley Funded Access (August 8; see my comments).
2. Like other hybrid programs, this is a welcome step. It will enlarge the body of OA literature even if the author uptake is low. Cambridge promises to lower subscription prices in proportion to author uptake, which is good, but says nothing about waiving fees in case of economic hardship, letting authors retain copyright, or depositing copies of the Cambridge Open articles in an OA repository independent of Cambridge.
3. I applaud Cambridge's decision to continue to allow immediate OA archiving of peer-reviewed author manuscripts, even when authors choose not to participate in Cambridge Open. That's a step most of the other OA hybrid programs have been unwilling to take.