Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Sunday, August 24, 2008

IEEE is considering a hybrid OA journal program

Heather Morrison, IEEE and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society OA Panel, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, August 23, 2008.  Excerpt:

Abstract:   This post is a brief summary of an open access panel discussion at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) meeting in Vancouver, August 22, 2008. EMBS is a part of the IEEE (international engineering association). IEEE has been a leader in green self-archiving policy since 1995, allowing authors to self-archive on their own web pages or institutional repositories, with no embargos, and even the publisher's PDF - but oddly enough, not disciplinary repositories such as PubMedCentral. IEEE is now, like many publishers, considering a gold open access option for authors. This could be a very interesting discussion process! Based on yesterday's meeting, IEEE should probably assume that if they ask their authors to pay article processing fees, they can expect in-depth questions about why the fees are so high. Naturally, engineers will have many, many ideas about how to do things better, and for less, too! ...

My advice to EMBS, and IEEE: keep the great green policy - and add disciplinary repositories, with no embargo. Ask the advice of your members; they have lots to contribute! If you come up with an optional OA program, consider allowing members to offset fees with their volunteer work. Be sure to lower library subscriptions to reflect revenue, and develop library membership schemes so that libraries can pay some, or all, of the fees for their authors....