The APS previously made its five print journals available through subscriptions, and its two e-journals (Physical Review Special Topics and Physics Education Research) on an open access basis.
Payment of a $975 (£514) publication fee will secure the free online availability of any article from Physical Review A-E (the fee for Physical Review Letters articles is $1,300). The model covers all articles, including those from the APS archive, which stretches back to 1893, should any philanthropic sponsors wish to pay for articles to be released online for free.
Tom McIlrath, APS treasurer and publisher, said the society had been keen to keep the fee low to make it as attractive as possible to authors....The society had been discussing ways of introducing open access for some time, said McIlrath. The difficulty, he said, lay in enabling authors to publish open access articles without significantly impacting subscription revenue.
“If we get a lot of requests this way, [McIlrath said,] we can lower subscription prices further. If it begins to be a predominant path for authors to take, we’ll have to reconsider, because it begins to eat into our subscription fees.” ...
Comment. For my evaluation of the APS implementation of the hybrid model, see my article in the September SOAN.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/12/2006 03:46:00 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.
