... Essentials of Glycobiology, the largest and most authoritative text in its field, will be freely available online beginning October 15, through collaboration between the Consortium of Glycobiology Editors, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Fittingly, the release of the book follows soon after the October 14th celebration of International Open Access Day, which will highlight prior successes in providing such open access to research journals. ...
The online version of Essentials of Glycobiology is freely available from the NLM/NCBI Bookshelf—a collection of biomedical books and other materials that have been adapted for online use. This version will be fully searchable, and there are plans to provide links to not only current, related resources in PubMed/MEDLINE, the most commonly used biomedical literature database, but also to other relevant Internet sites. The online format will also enable the editors to periodically revise and update the text, in collaboration with the Press and NCBI. ...
The first edition of Essentials of Glycobiology, published in print in 1999, was released online as part of the NCBI Bookshelf in 2003. ...
Comments:
Add this to the growing list of widely-used textbooks that are available OA.
Who's backing this is also noteworthy. It's not an author who negotiated the right to self-archive a copy, or an OA startup publisher; it's a scientific press and the National Library of Medicine.
The first edition of the book has been OA since 2003. Apparently, the impact on sales of the print copy hasn't been overwhelmingly negative, or it seems unlikely the publisher would support OA to the new edition.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/17/2008 02:26:00 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.
