Trojan Horse from American Chemical Society: Caveat Emptor

ACS Press Release: "The American Chemical Society’s Publications Division now offers an important publishing option in support of the Society’s journal authors who wish or need to sponsor open access to their published research articles. The ACS AuthorChoice option, first launched in October 2006, provides a fee-based mechanism for individual authors or their research funding agencies to sponsor the open availability of their articles on the Web at the time of online publication. Under this policy, the ACS as copyright holder enables unrestricted Web access to a contributing author’s publication from the Society’s website, in exchange for a fixed payment from the sponsoring author. ACS AuthorChoice also enables such authors to post electronic copies of published articles on their own personal websites and institutional repositories for non-commercial scholarly purposes.
      The base fee for the ACS AuthorChoice option is set at $3,000 through 2007, with significant discounts applied for contributing authors who are members of the American Chemical Society and/or who are affiliated with an ACS subscribing institution..."

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Dear colleagues,

I urge you to beware of the American Chemical Society's cynical, self-serving "AuthorChoice" Option.

This is an "offer" to "allow" authors to pay, not just in order to provide Gold OA -- which is what hybrid Gold/Green publishers like Springer ("Open Choice") and Cambridge University Press ("Open Option") offer -- but in order to provide Green OA! (Virtually all other hybrid-Gold publishers are Green on author self-archiving, and do not presume to charge for it.)

In other words, ACS is proposing to charge authors for the right to deposit their own papers in their own Institutional Repositories. This ploy was bound to be tried, but I urge you not to fall for it!

You already have an unassailable right to deposit your peer-reviewed, accepted final drafts (postprints) of your ACS articles in your Institutional Repository. If you don't feel you can make them Open Access just yet, make them Closed Access for now, but deposit them, immediately upon acceptance for publication (the preprint even earlier). (The "Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access (ID/OA) " policy.)

OA self-archiving mandates by research funders and universities, with time-limits on embargoes, are now being proposed and adopted to ensure that your deposits are not left in Closed Access for long. But on no account should you pay ACS a penny for the right to deposit.

If you feel your deposit needs to be placed under a provisional Closed Access Embargo, "almost-OA" is immediately available via the EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST Button that is being implemented by more and more Institutional Repositories. Direct individual user-to-author eprint requests and their fulfillment online are Fair Use, as they have always been, even when authors mailed paper reprints to individual requesters.

To pay for Gold OA today out of scarce research funds -- while all publication costs are still being fully paid for by subscriptions -- is already irrational.

But to pay for Green OA would border on the absurd.

Caveat Emptor!

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On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Adam Chesler (American Chemical Society) wrote (to the American Scientist Open Access Forum):

"Recent posts to the listserv have contributed to a misunderstanding about the ACS AuthorChoice program to provide open article access... The ACS Author Choice option is for authors who wish or need to sponsor open access to their published research articles. It allows immediate open web access to the final published article as delivered from the ACS web site, in exchange for a fixed fee paid by the author or author's sponsor... ACS AuthorChoice also licenses authors to post electronic copies of published articles on their own personal websites... for scholarly purposes..."

Does ACS endorse the posting of authors' peer-reviewed final drafts on their own institutional website for scholarly purpose without fee? In other words, is ACS now "Green" on author self-archiving, as the following American Learned Societies are?

American Anthropological Association
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Astronomical Society
American College of Sports Medicine
American Dairy Science Association
American Diabetes Association
American Economic Association
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Institute of Physics
American Library Association
American Mathematical Society
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
American Psychological Association
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
American Society for Cell Biology
American Society for Clinical Investigation
American Society for Microbiology
American Society of Hematology
American Society of Limnology and Oceanography
American Vacuum Society
Acoustical Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Optical Society of America

That is the only point at issue. The understanding is that ACS authors are instead asked to pay ACS to do this: Is this the case?

(If I have indeed misunderstood, a profound and sincere apology is in order.)

"ACS permits within the first 12 months of publication up to 50 complimentary article downloads to interested readers who are not already ACS subscribers; at 12 months and thereafter, reader access via these author-directed links is unlimited."

My question is about the 51st to the Nth would-be user request during the first 12 months from the date of acceptance for publication, not just about the first 50. However, the draft in question need not be the official ACS PDF: just the author's final accepted version:

Does ACS endorse the posting of authors' peer-reviewed final drafts on their own institutional websites for scholarly purposes without fee?

Reply from Adam Chesler (American Chemical Society), on American Scientist Open Access Forum:

"The answer is: No, such posting is not endorsed or allowed. By the ACS Articles on Request program, authors may post a link that directs the user to the final published article on the ACS web site. Many ACS authors have taken advantage of this free option, to good effect."

Adam Chesler
Assistant Director, Sales and Library Relations
American Chemical Society
1155 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
Office Telephone: (202) 872-6183
Mobile Telephone: (617) 230-3201
Fax: (202) 872-6005
http://pubs.acs.org

I don't doubt that these free adverstisements serve ACS (and the first 50 would-be users) well during the 12-month embargo.

I would urge all ACS authors to also deposit their postprints in their own Institutional Repositories, provisionally setting access as "Closed Access", if they wish. (This makes only the metadata visible and accessible to all.) During the embargo, this makes "almost-OA" immediately available for all would-be users webwide via the EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST Button that is being implemented by more and more Institutional Repositories.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum