Re: ACS Author Choice Program

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 19:27:24 +0000

On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Adam Chesler (American Chemical Society) wrote:

> Recent posts to the listserv have contributed to a misunderstanding
> about the ACS AuthorChoice program to provide open article access...
>
> The ACS Author Choice option is for authors who wish or need to sponsor
> open access to their published research articles. It allows immediate
> open web access to the final published article as delivered from the ACS
> web site, in exchange for a fixed fee paid by the author or author's
> sponsor...
> ACS AuthorChoice also licenses authors to post electronic
> copies of published articles on their own personal websites...
> for scholarly purposes...

Does ACS endorse the posting of authors' peer-reviewed final drafts
on their own institutional website for scholarly purpose without fee?
(In other words, is ACS now "Green" on author self-archiving, as the
following American Learned Societies are?)

    American Anthropological Association
    American Association for the Advancement of Science
    American Astronomical Society
    American College of Sports Medicine
    American Dairy Science Association
    American Diabetes Association
    American Economic Association
    American Geophysical Union
    American Institute of Biological Sciences
    American Institute of Physics
    American Library Association
    American Mathematical Society
    American Meteorological Society
    American Physical Society
    American Psychological Association
    American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
    American Society for Cell Biology
    American Society for Clinical Investigation
    American Society for Microbiology
    American Society of Hematology
    American Society of Limnology and Oceanography
    American Vacuum Society
    Acoustical Society of America
    Ecological Society of America
    Optical Society of America
    http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html

That is the only point at issue. The understanding is that ACS authors
are asked to pay to do this: Is this the case?

(If I have misunderstood, a profound apology is in order.)

> ACS permits within the first 12
> months of publication up to 50 complimentary article downloads to
> interested readers who are not already ACS subscribers; at 12 months and
> thereafter, reader access via these author-directed links is unlimited.

My question is about the 51st to the Nth would-be user request during
the first 12 months from the date of acceptance for publication, not
just about the first 50. However, the draft in question need not be the
official ACS PDF: just the author's final accepted version:

Does ACS endorse the posting of authors' peer-reviewed final drafts
on their own institutional websites for scholarly purposes without fee?

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Received on Thu Mar 08 2007 - 19:41:26 GMT

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