In a move to open-up access to scientific research, an initiative announced today will enable German scientists to publish their research free of charge in New Journal of Physics (NJP), the online open-access journal jointly owned by the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Max Planck Society (MPG), a leading German research organisation, will pay the NJP article publication charge centrally for all of its scientists who submit work to the journal before the end of 2008. NJP was one of the first open-access, electronic-only journals, publishing original research articles across the whole of physics. Permanently free to read, NJP is funded solely by article publication charges. The journal has grown by more than 900% since 2001 and over 40,000 NJP articles are now downloaded each month. NJP’s official impact factor has risen from 2.480 in 2003 and is currently 3.095. Ken Lillywhite, journals business director at Institute of Physics Publishing said, “We are delighted to maximize the opportunity for researchers at Max-Planck institutes to benefit from publishing with the journal. This will help NJP establish itself yet further as a premier research journal serving the whole physics community. Receiving the endorsement of a research organisation with the international stature of the Max Planck Society is a key development for the journal’s open-access publishing model.” Kurt Mehlhorn, vice president of the Max Planck Society said, “According to the Berlin Declaration the MPG advocates the publication of scientific works in journals which are dedicated to open-access. The MPG aims to find solutions that support further development of the existing financial framework of scientific publishing. I am strongly convinced that offering our scientists the opportunity to make their papers open-access will be a success because it provides authors with extra choice and will improve access to published articles....”
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/29/2006 09:57:00 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.
