Professional Society’s Take on Access to Scientific Literature
Bettie Sue Masters and Judith S. Bond have entered the Nature debate on open access. The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), the flagship journal of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), will celebrate its centennial in 2005. More recently, JBC has provided free, on-line, full text searchable access to every published article since its inception in 1905. The [ASBMB Journal of Lipid Research (JLR)] now also provides free, on-line access to every published article since its founding in 1959. Many other journals are now following suit but only a few have succeeded in achieving the goal of making their entire contents available in such a form. This activity was undertaken with the view of providing a vital service to the biological sciences community but it was not done without considerable thought and concern about its financial implications; the process cost in excess of $700,000. The financial stability of the ASBMB and its business model for publishing has allowed its non-profit organization to take on such expenses, to serve its readers, authors and science. Its expenses are paid by a combination of sources, primarily by page charges to authors and subscriptions to individuals and libraries. In a recent survey of over a 1,000 JBC authors, over 80% preferred this mode of covering expenses to other models, such as authors or institutions paying all the costs.
[Nature 7/8/04 Open Access News 7/11/04 http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/27.html]
Be sure to look at the entire debate on Open Access in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/ ( Univ. of Iowa access and subscribers to Nature only)
