OUP Announces Open Access Initiative
Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press (OUP), which has experimented with a range of open access initiatives, announced that beginning in July, it will follow commercial competitors Springer and Blackwell’s by offering an optional "author-pays model" for some journal titles. "Oxford Open" gives authors the choice to make their articles freely available online immediately upon publication for a fee of $2,800. A discounted author charge of $1,500, however, will be available to authors from institutions that maintain a current online subscription to the journal. Martin Richardson, managing director of Oxford Journals, said the program would help OUP collect data on the demand for open access by authors across a broad range of subjects. "It offers research funders a choice as to how quickly they wish the research results they fund to be made freely available online, without undermining the current business models," he said.
In addition, OUP also announced that it was amending its policy on self-archiving to be consistent with the recently implemented National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy. Previously, OUP allowed the archiving of pre-prints, but not post-prints–a "Yellow" publisher under the Romeo color code. Under OUP’s new policy, authors can archive their post-prints in repositories, including the NIH’s PubMed Central–but "must stipulate that public availability be delayed until
12 months after first online publication in the journal unless the paper is being published within Oxford Open." That policy will disappoint boosters of the open access policy. NIH director Elias Zerhouni has said he expected that few would choose to withhold access for the longest possible term–12 months. That, however, is exactly what OUP has announced. Further details about Oxford’s policy can be found at www.oupjournals.org/selfarchivingpolicy. For more on Oxford Open, see www.oupjournals.org/oxfordopen.
[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), The Publishing Report, May 5, 2005]
