...Effective immediately, authors of journal articles and book chapters in collected volumes and series titles have the option of making their accepted articles freely accessible on the service Reference Global.
de Gruyter Open Library will be offered in addition to the subscription or purchase-based publication channels, which remain free of charge to authors. This will result in a mixture of traditionally published and open access articles within the online version of journals and ebooks. Open access articles will be clearly indicated on the online's list of contents. Online, print and combined subscription options will continue to be available to institutions and individuals.
de Gruyter Open Library is only available to authors whose articles have been accepted for publication. Therefore, all submitted papers will continue to undergo the established, entirely independent peer-review processes.
Price caps
The purpose of de Gruyter Open Library is to allow for research funding agencies to shift budgets from supporting subscription and book acquisitions to funding the publication of articles at the author’s choice. Therefore, de Gruyter guarantees that subscription prices in the case of journals and book prices will be lowered according to the share of open access income compared to the original calculation of the title. If the publisher’s calculation for a specific book was for example a sales line of 10,000 Euro and a minimum of 20% of the income is generated through open access fees, the price of the book will be lowered by 20%.
Authors’ service
In addition to publication on the website, articles included in de Gruyter Open Library will be archived in an open access repository.
Authors who have previously published their work in de Gruyter journals will also be entitled to apply for their papers to be retrospectively included in the de Gruyter open access publishing program.
de Gruyter Open Library Details ...
The authors, or their institutions or funding agencies, are required to pay an access fee. This fee is 1,750 Euro (currently $2,450)
Copyright and License Agreement
Authors opting for de Gruyter Open Library retain the copyright to their article but are required to sign the de Gruyter Open LibraryLicense Agreement, certifying that they are the original authors and warranting the integrity and lawfulness of the article....
This hybrid policy has five strengths that many others lack. It allows authors who select the OA option to retain copyright. The articles are published under an open license (equivalent to CC-BY-NC). Copies are deposited in an OA repository. de Gruyter promises to reduce subscription prices roughly in proportion to author uptake. And the option is available retroactively to any previous de Gruyter authors who wish to take advantage of it. The first four of these are among the most important of the nine criteria I used to assess hybrid programs.
I can't tell whether the OA editions are the same as the published editions (as opposed to abridgments), but they appear to be. I see that de Gruyter deposits the OA editions in an OA repository, but I can't tell which repository or whether authors may deposit them in repositories independent of the publisher. I can't tell whether authors under a prior obligation to their funding agency to provide OA to their peer-reviewed manuscripts must pay for de Gruyter's OA option in order to comply. Finally, I can't tell whether de Gruyter previously allowed postprint archiving (SHERPA doesn't know either) or, if so, whether it has now retreated from it in order to steer authors toward the new fee-based gold OA option.
I believe that de Gruyter is the first publisher to extend its hybrid OA policy to book chapters. Not only can book-chapter authors select the option, but book purchasers will see the book price drop roughly in proportion to author uptake.
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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
