Yesterday, the American Chemical Society began a pilot program that will make some journal papers available online about two to seven weeks quicker than was the case previously. Authors publishing in ACS Chemical Biology, Biochemistry, Journal of Proteome Research, and Molecular Pharmaceutics can opt to have their peer-reviewed, accepted manuscripts posted on the ACS Publications website within three days of acceptance. These "Just Accepted" manuscripts, (see example here) which are free to all readers, are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI) that can be used to cite the papers. "ACS is providing this service to expedite the dissemination of scientific information in a fully citable format," says Evelyn Jabri, senior acquisitions editor and project leader.
A "Just Accepted" manuscript then proceeds through the usual ACS production process: Technical editors edit and format it for the Web, and authors approve galleys. The final published article retains the same DOI as the "Just Accepted" manuscript, ensuring that citations link to the final scientific article of record when it becomes available.
Biochemistry Editor Richard N. Armstrong says the "Just Accepted" program moves a paper into the public domain as rapidly as possible. That's particularly useful for grant applicants, who can cite these papers as being already published. But some authors are leery about releasing a paper before it's in its final form, Armstrong says....
ASBMB's "Papers in Press" program reduces the time from acceptance to publication by six to eight weeks, Director of Publications Nancy Rodnan says. The society places each accepted manuscript in a permanent, publicly accessible archive on the respective journal's website, but this free access hasn't eroded subscription demand, she notes.
Comments
If I understand it, the "just accepted" manuscripts are peer-reviewed but not copy-edited or formatted for publication. ACS will not only make them gratis OA within three days of acceptance, but will allow them to remain gratis OA even after the edited version of the article is published (as TA of course). If I have this right, then I commend ACS for this policy --and I've often criticized the ACS for its opposition to OA. I'm also glad to see it cite the experience of the ASBMB, whose similar program has not caused journal cancellations.
Note: I'm assuming that the "just accepted" articles are gratis OA, and not libre OA, but this is only an assumption. I just looked at the sample to which ACS points. It has a copyright statement but no licensing information on the landing page. It has neither a copyright statement nor licensing information on the PDF itself.
Currently, the ACS does not allow preprint or postprint archiving. However, I hope it will now reconsider and allow both. If it's willing to allow OA for peer-reviewed manuscripts on its own web site (prior to publication and with DOIs), then it should be willing to allow OA for peer-reviewed manuscripts in OA repositories (from the time of publication and without DOIs). It should also be willing (a fortiori) to allow OA archiving for preprints.
Update (1/21/09). I was right that the "just accepted" articles are gratis OA, but wrong that they remain online and remain gratis OA after the final version is published. On the contrary, the TA published version replaces the OA version at the time of publication. (Thanks to Evelyn Jabri, Senior Acquisitions Editor at the ACS, for her helpful correspondence.) For other aspects of the "just accepted" article pilot project, see the FAQ.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/20/2009 10:36:00 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.
