It is now over six months since the launch of Cerebrospinal Fluid Research in December 2004. Cerebrospinal Fluid Research is published by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. To fund this, from July 1st 2005 authors of articles accepted for publication will be asked to pay an article-processing charge (APC) of £330.00. Traditionally, readers pay to access articles, either through subscriptions or by paying a fee each time they download an article. Escalating journal subscriptions and shrinking library budgets have resulted in libraries subscribing to fewer journals, and the range of articles available to readers is becoming more limited. Although traditional journals publish authors' work for free (unless there are page or colour charges), paying to access articles limits the number of people that can read, use and cite them. The benefits of Open Access and of Cerebrospinal Fluid Research's Open Access policy were highlighted in a previous editorial....The APC pays for online submission and efficient peer review, for the article to be freely and universally accessible in various formats online, and for the processes required for inclusion in PubMed and archiving in PubMed Central, e-Depot, Potsdam and INIST. There is no remuneration of any kind provided to the Editor-in-Chief, to any members of the editorial board, or to peer reviewers; all of whose work is entirely voluntary. Although some authors may consider £330 expensive, it must be remembered that Cerebrospinal Fluid Research does not levy additional page or colour charges on top of this fee. With the article being online only, any number of colour figures and photographs can be included, at no extra cost. Another common expense with traditional journals is the purchase of reprints for distribution, and the cost of these reprints is frequently greater than our APCs. Cerebrospinal Fluid Research provides free, publication-quality pdf files for distribution, in lieu of reprints.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/22/2005 09:22:00 AM.
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.
