For background, see Vladimiro Sassone's Letter from the Bulletin Editor in the current issue (pp. 6-7):
Rejoice!, as the Bulletin of the EATCS is going Open Access! Yes, starting from the October 2006 issue, the Bulletin will be freely available on the EATCS web site for a trial period of unspecified length; retrospectively, the past issues from no 81 (October 2003) will also be available electronically. EATCS members will be able to opt for a printed copy in addition to the default PDF one....
The Council of the EATCS, recognising the high quality reached by this publication during its many years of activity, convened that the Bulletin must take up the challenge of becoming more widely available beyond the circle of EATCS members, if it is to keep improving. This is expected to enlarge our readership and, therefore, provide our authors and editors with a well-deserved, higher return for their excellent work and contribute to further raise quality standards. With its decision, the Council turns the Bulletin from ‘just’ a “members’ benefit” to a high-visibility item, an icon to speak up for the entire Association and promote its activities. In this sense, this is a “promotion” for the BEATCS, and indeed a source of satisfaction for me. Of course, going OA is a momentous choice from the Council: the Bulletin has been among the chief Association’s members’ benefits for over 30 years, and before committing to it for good we need to collect feedback from our members and from the community at large, and assess the return. This is the reason to start with a trial period....
Also see today's blog post by Luca Aceto, a member of the EATCS Council:
...[The current issue] of the Bulletin marks an important date in the life of this publication in that it is the first volume that is available freely on the web from the moment of its publication. This is a one year open access experiment that I hope will be continued in the future. If you have not done so already, I warmly encourage you to become a member of the EATCS, also to support the open distribution of the Bulletin.
I firmly believe that having the Bulletin open access will further increase its quality and impact, turning it into an even more useful and widely read publication than it already is....
Update (October 2007). It's been a year since the trial period began, and all issues since then have been OA. It looks like the OA trial period was a success and the journal's OA policy is no longer an experiment.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/27/2006 09:34:00 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.
