While some speculate that few will be willing to pay, as authors, to provide Open Access to articles, the evidence to the contrary is growing. In May, PNAS instituted a $1000/article fee for authors to purchase Open Access upon publication, rather than waiting through the 6 month embargo period.
I stumbled across a forthcoming article where the authors chose to exercise this option.
Katharine Hayhoe et al. Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California. PNAS 101(34):12422-12427 24 August 2004
I guess the jury is still out on the value authors attach to making their research immediately available to the widest possible audience, but the evidence from PNAS, the Entomological Society of America, PLoS Biology, and the many BioMed Central journals seems to indicate that there is a real market for Open Access.
David Prosser reviewed the last four issues (in reverse chronological order from the most current issue - 17 August) the percentage of open access articles has been (roughly) 9, 13, 10, 12%.
So currently PNAS is a 10% open access journal. It will be interesting to see if the Open Access papers appear with greater regularity in the PNAS 'most frequently read' list.
Posted by
George Porter at 8/20/2004 05:03:00 PM.
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.
