Nucleic Acids Research, 2007, Vol. 35, No. 20 6691
© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Editorial |
Editorial
Senior Editor, Oxford Journals
claire.bird{at}oxfordjournals.org
As most of our readers and authors will know, in 2005 Nucleic Acids Research became one of the first established journals to move from a subscription-based publishing model to author-pays open access. This means that all articles published in the journal are freely available online to everybody, ensuring wide dissemination and high usage.
When we embarked on this initiative we believed that it would not be possible to replace the journal's subscription income overnight with income from author charges, and so we aimed to make the transition to full open access via a mixed model, funded by a combination of author charges, institutional memberships, and print subscriptions. Thanks to the support of NAR's community, we are very pleased to say that the model has been a success so far. Submissions have remained stable and the results of our ongoing author surveys suggest that the majority of authors are very happy with the service NAR provides.
Income from sales of the NAR print subscription has helped to subsidize author charges in this transitional period. As was expected, print subscriptions have declined under the open access model, and so each year we have needed to increase the author open access charges to compensate for this decline. Based on projections for the 2008 volume we have decided to increase the author open access charges in 2008 by 10% to the following:
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1870
Discounts and waivers will continue to be available for authors in developing countries and we also consider waivers in other cases of genuine financial hardship.
Our research into the average author charges paid for other journals in the field suggests that NAR remains competitive under the open access model (when, for example, colour charges, page charges, charges for electronic offprints/PDFs, and optional or mandatory open access charges are taken into account). We will continue to strive to ensure that NAR remains attractive and accessible to its authors.
Along with immediate free access online, a benefit of NAR's open access model is that authors are able to deposit the final version of their article in institutional and subject repositories. This allows, for example, NIH, UK MRC and Wellcome Trust grantees to comply with the policies of their funders. The entire content of NAR is automatically deposited by Oxford Journals in the PubMed Central repositories upon publication, removing the need for NAR authors to take this step. Under the journal's Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/), all users are also free to re-use NAR content for non-commercial purposes, providing another benefit to the community.
We very much hope that our authors and readers will continue to support NAR and as always welcome comments and suggestions that will help shape the journal in the future.
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