What ESA is doing is very important and will do much for the cause of open
access. An example to be followed by other societies.
At BioMed Central we also offer 'input-paid' open access in about 90
journals in the biomedical areas, but it's not optional. See details in the
text below. Our definition of what open access is is here:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/charter.
Jan Velterop
www.biomedcentral.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas J. Walker [mailto:tjw_at_ufl.edu]
> Sent: 30 January 2003 15:18
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Are "Open Access Reprints" a Unique Service?
>
>
> Since January 2000, the Entomological Society of America has
> offered its
> authors the option of buying a package of services that will soon be
> renamed "Open Access Reprints". For less than the cost of 100 paper
> reprints (e.g., $95 for a 7-page article), authors may buy
> these benefits:
>
> (1) As soon as your article is published, ESA will post the
> PDF file on its
> Web server with access free to all.
>
BioMed Central posts a PDF as well as a fully structured XML-generated HTML
version with references hotlinked via CrossRef, on its own site as well as
on PubMed Central (US) and INIST (France) with full open access. All article
metadata is OAI-compliant.
> (2) You may immediately obtain the PDF file of your article from ESA's
> server and post it on your home page and on other publicly
> accessible web
> servers. You may also use it to send your article to colleagues as an
> e-mail attachment and to make as many "electronic reprints"
> of your article
> as you wish.
BioMed Central offers this, too, and also the HTML version can be used for
these purposes.
>
> (3) Anyone may freely read or print your article from the
> Internet and make
> as many copies for noncommercial purposes as they wish.
BioMed Central offers this as well and imposes no restrictions on commercial
use of the articles by any third party.
>
> (4) ESA will see that the full text of your article is
> accessible to the
> robots of public search services. For example, Google
> (http://www.google.com) will index the full text of your
> article on ESA's
> server, thereby helping the public find and access the full
> text of your
> article.
All articles published by BioMed Central are listed in PubMed and indexed in
Google and other search engines, such as SciRus, and in many indexing
services such as Biosis, Medline, CAS, ISI, Embase, et cetera. They are all
OAI-compliant and can be 'harvested' with OAI-harvesters.
>
> QUESTION: Does any other publisher offer their authors a
> similar, optional
> package of services?
It may be unique in that it is optional.
>
> My reason for asking this question is that after three years
> of silence ESA
> is planning to tell its members and authors about benefits (2) through
> (4). Can I truthfully tell the ESA president that ESA's service is
> unique? In other words, is ESA the only publisher that
> offers the above
> package of impact-enhancing services to authors who are
> willing to pay a
> modest price for immediate open access to their refereed,
> formatted articles.
>
> Note: Authors who sign ESA's copyright agreement cannot
> legally post the
> PDF files of their articles until 2 years after publication.
Authors in BioMed Central journals keep copyright and irrevocably licence
BMC to make their articles available in open access (see
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/license, particularly point 4).
>
> Note: ESA currently sells Open Access Reprints, under the name "PDF
> Reprints," to 55% of its authors. Detailed figures and an account of
> ESA's flirtation with selling its authors open access from
> 1995 through
> 2002 is at http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/epub/esaepub.htm.
>
> Note: I am lobbying for ESA to increase its list of benefits.
> For example,
> (5) ESA will post your article on an OAI-compliant server.
> (6) ESA will post your article on PubMed Central.
> (7) ESA will encourage indexing services such as Current
> Contents Connect,
> Web of Science, Biosis, and CAB Abstracts to hotlink to the
> full text of
> your article.
>
> Note: Florida Entomological Society charges all its authors
> an open-access
> fee, but it is not optional. For details (including the
> fiscal results)
> see http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/epub/index.htm#epub.
>
> ============================================
> Thomas J. Walker
> Department of Entomology & Nematology
> PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
> University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
> E-mail: tjw_at_ufl.edu (or tjwalker_at_mail.ifas.ufl.edu)
> FAX: (352)392-0190
> Web: http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/
> ============================================
>
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Received on Thu Jan 30 2003 - 17:48:04 GMT