> PubMed Central will host individual OA articles
>
> PubMed Central http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/index.html
> has launched an About Open Access page
> http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/about/openaccess.html drawing attention
> to the journals that provide open access to their contents through
> PMC. The page also announces an important new policy: "[I]n October
> 2003, PMC began accepting individual open access articles from
> journals that do not participate in PMC on a routine basis. For
> the specific conditions under which PMC accepts these articles,
> see the relevant PMC agreement (in Microsoft Word format)
> http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/pmcdoc/pmc-openaccs-agree.doc
> ." The offer is open to all authors in the life sciences
> willing to release their work to "open access" as
> defined by the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm. (Thanks to George
> Porter.) Posted to Open Access News 12 November 2003 by Peter Suber
>http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_11_09_fosblogarchive.html#a106866889488739033
Relevant Prior Subject Threads:
"E-Biomed: Very important NIH Proposal"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0240.html
http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm
"NIH's Public Archive for the Refereed Literature: PUBMED CENTRAL"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0372.html
Just two comments:
(1) More central open-access archives in which authors can self-archive
their articles are always welcome and helpful (especially if they are
OAI-interoperable) and it is gratifying to see what was originally the
E-Biomed proposal -- which at first unfortunately backed away from
individual author self-archiving of toll-access journal articles --
now ready to accept author self-archiving at last!
It has to be added, though, that since 1999, with the advent
of distributed eprint archiving, integrated by the glue of
OAI-interoperability
http://www.openarchives.org/ , it has become
apparent that institutional self-archiving is a more promising route
than central self-archiving, because researchers and their instutions
share the benefits of maximizing the impact of their own research output,
and share the costs of impact-loss because of toll-based access-denial
to would-be users everywhere. Institutions also wield the carrot/stick
of "publish or perish" over their own researchers and are hence
in the position to mandate and monitor compliance with their own
self-archiving policy. Central archives share no such common costs/benefits
with researchers, and are not in a position to mandate self-archiving
or to monitor compliance.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
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(2) The Bethesda statement on open access publishing
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2878.html
is indeed a statement on open-access *publishing* and not on *open access,*
i.e., only on the golden and not the green (self-archiving) road to open access.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3147.html
It is a potentially useful document, but only if this one-sidedness
is conscientiously and decisively remedied, for as it stands, the
Bethesda Statement is simply missing out on 95% of the immediate
potential for open access. (In addition, the Bethesda definition of
"open" is over-determined, again because of its one-sided focus on
open-access journal publishingalone. All that research
and researchers need is free online full-text access to
all research; the rest comes automatically with the online
territory: See the subject-thread: "Free Access vs. Open Access"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2956.html )
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0021.gif
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Stevan Harnad
NOTE: Complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Posted discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Dual Open-Access Strategy:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Received on Sat Nov 15 2003 - 22:01:41 GMT
