The Journal of Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience has converted to hybrid OA. The decision is apparently contained in John Maunsell's editorial, Open Choice, in today's issue (accessible only to subscribers, at least so far). I don't have access and can't quote an excerpt, but here's a paraphrase from Noah Gray at Action Potential, the neuroscience blog from Nature:
A new policy in the Journal of Neuroscience demonstrates the current push towards open access publication. Researchers can pay to have their article freely available immediately upon publication, starting with all articles submitted as of January 1, 2008....
Comment. Note the trajectory of JN's access policy over the past three years. When the NIH policy was new in 2005, and requested OA within 12 months, JN urged its NIH-funded authors to demand the full 12 month embargo and then to insert a paragraph saying that the Society for Neuroscience "disclaims any responsibility or liability for errors or omissions" in the version on deposit in PubMed Central. In January 2006, it liberalized its policy and allowed OA after six months. Now it is permitting immediate OA for those who pay the publication fee.
Update (1/11/08). A colleague has sent me the text, which is only three paragraphs in length. Excerpt:
The fee is currently $1,250 for a Brief Communications article and $2,500 for a regular article. These sums are the minimum required to cover the costs of reviewing, composing, and publishing articles....
The response to Open Choice will give the Journal information about the extent to which authors and their funding agencies are willing to financially support an entirely open-access journal.
Update (1/11/08). Another colleague points out JN's page of charges, and summarizes:
It's astonishingly expensive:
$100 submission fee (for everyone, even non-OA) $850 publication fee (ditto) $2500 OA fee $1000 per color figure, unless the editors feel it is essential *and* you are a society member...
No mention of CC license or deposit on PMC....
No mention of whether subs prices will decline....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/09/2008 09:43:00 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.
