Unbound compiled by Elizabeth L Fleischer Global Initiative on Sharing Avian is developing its own e-print repository, Open-Access Influenza Data Launched which as of this writing was expected to In August 2006, Peter Bogner, Ilaria Capua, go live toward the end of 2006 and be News Around Nancy Cox, and David Lipman launched available at www.nerc.ac.uk/about/access/ the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian repository.asp. Two of the NERC collabora- the Net Influenza Data (GISAID), a project to tive centers—Plymouth Marine Laboratory provide open access to H5N1 avian influ- and the National Oceanography Centre, enza data. They published an open letter in Southhampton—already have repositories Nature calling on all influenza scientists to available. participate in it. A 24 August press release See www.nerc.ac.uk/about/access and from GISAID announced that the forma- Peter Suber, SPARC Open Access tion of the consortium of leading medical Newsletter, issue 101, 2 September 2006, researchers around the world is “designed to www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/ improve the sharing of influenza data, ana- 09-02-06.htm. lyze data findings jointly, and publish the results collaboratively as part of the Global Open Access Central Expands Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza from BioMed to Chemistry and Data (GISAID)”. Data collected under Beyond the initiative will be deposited in three The team that created BioMed Central, major publicly available databases: EBML the world’s largest biomedical open-access (United Kingdom), DDBJ (Japan), and publisher, is now moving into chemistry GenBank (United States). The GISAID and has plans to expand into physics and consortium is open to all scientists, “pro- mathematics, calling the expanded pub- vided they agree to share their own data, lishing collection Open Access Central. credit the use of others’ data, analyze find- In August 2006, BioMed Central’s parent ings jointly, and publish results collabora- company, the Science Navigation Group, tively”. The consortium would publish the launched Chemistry Central, which con- data as soon as possible after analysis and tains articles from existing open-access validation, within a maximum of 6 months, chemistry journals published with BioMed a period they hope to reduce as their expe- Central, including Geochemical Transactions rience grows. and Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. See gisaid.org for full details, a press release It also includes chemistry-related content on the launch, and a list of signatories. from other BioMed Central journals, such as BMC Chemical Biology. Chemistry Central will soon be launching further UK Natural Environment Research chemistry journals, including Chemistry Council Adopts Open-Access Central Journal. Although not yet Mandate launched, Open Access Central intends to Starting with new grants awarded expand into physics and mathematics with after 1 October 2006, the UK Natural PhysMath Central, although no projected Environment Research Council (NERC) launch date was listed on its Web site. is requiring that an electronic copy of any Peer-reviewed articles will be immediately published peer-reviewed paper supported available online with no access charges or in whole or in part by NERC funding be subscriptions. deposited “at the earliest opportunity” in See www.openaccesscentral.com/ and press an e-print repository. This is the fourth of release at www.biomedcentral.com/info/ the eight research councils of the UK to about/pr-releases?pr=20060822b. require its grantees to deposit the results Also covered by Peter Suber, SPARC Open of their research in an open-access reposi- Access Newsletter, issue 101, 2 September tory. To help grantees without access to 2006, www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/ such a repository and to improve access to newsletter/09-02-06.htm. output from their research centers, NERC Science Editor • March – April 2007 • Vol 30 • No 2 • 55 Unbound continued CERN Leads Effort to Buy Open publisher agree to provide the author with Access to Particle Physics Papers an electronic copy of the published article The June 2006 Report of the Task Force on in pdf format within 14 days of first publica- Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics tion and at no charge. describes an effort, led by the physics labo- See www.arl.org/sparc/author/. ratory CERN in Switzerland, to form a con- sortium of laboratories and funding agencies American Chemical Society to pay publication costs for particle physics Experiments with Hybrid papers in journals so as to provide free, Open-Access Model immediate access to these journals by all In addition to full open-access journals, people. On the basis of the cost per article many publishers are experimenting with quoted by surveyed publishers and the aver- “hybrid” models, which expand access, for age number of papers published in 2003- instance by allowing authors to pay extra 2005, the report says that “sponsoring all to make their articles open to the public. journals ready for [open access] at the time The American Chemical Society (ACS) of the enquiry would require an annual bud- is experimenting with this model through get of €5–6 Million, significantly less than ACS AuthorChoice, a fee-based mecha- the present global expenditure for particle nism that allows individual authors or their physics journal subscriptions”. The report research funding agencies “to sponsor the estimates that about 10,000 scientists are in open availability of their articles on the the particle physics community worldwide web at the time of online publication”. As and says that that number is small enough of this writing, this policy was due to be to take some risk and yet large enough to be implemented late in fall 2006. The base fee a representative test bed. for AuthorChoice is $3000 during 2006- See library.cern.ch/OATaskForce_ 2007, with substantially reduced prices (as public.pdf. low as $1000) for contributing authors who are members of ACS or who are affiliated SPARC Promotes Author Rights with an ACS-subscribing institution. ACS to Secure Broader Article already had in place “ACS Articles on Distribution Request”, which provides all contributing The Scholarly Publishing and Academic authors with a unique URL in the ACS Resources Coalition (SPARC) has intro- Web site that they may e-mail to colleagues duced Author Rights, “an educational or post on external Web sites. Authors are initiative and introduction to the SPARC allowed 50 downloads in the first year and Author Addendum, a legal form that enables unlimited access after that. authors of journal articles to modify publish- From pubs.acs.org/pressrelease/author_ ers’ copyright transfer agreements and allows choice. Also see additional developments on authors to keep key rights to their articles”. hybrid open access from Peter Suber, SPARC SPARC’s Web site has a form called the Open Access Newsletter, issue 102, 2 SPARC Author’s Addendum to Publication October 2006; www.earlham.edu/~peters/ Agreement that it suggests attaching to a fos/newsletter/10-02-06.htm. publication’s copyright agreement to secure additional rights for the author. Specifically, Springer and the Nano Research it requests that the author retain the rights Society Partner to Offer Open- to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, Access Nanotechnology Journal and publicly display the article in any The publisher Springer and the Nano medium for noncommercial purposes; the Research Society have partnered to publish right to prepare derivative works from the Nanoscale Research Letters (NRL), an open- article; and the right to authorize others to access journal on nanotechnology. The make any noncommercial use of the article journal is “an interdisciplinary forum for the as long as the author receives credit and open communication of scientific and tech- the journal is cited. It also requests that the nological advances in the creation and use 56 • Science Editor • March – April 2007 • Vol 30 • No 2 Unbound continued of objects at the nanometer scale”. The first to business models in publishing. open-access articles appeared on Springer’s • Institute “extended quality” rankings of online platform, SpringerLink, in July 2006. scientific journals, with the definition of Springer is waiving the open-access article quality broadened to include quality of fee for all accepted manuscripts received for dissemination (accessibility). submission in 2006. Manuscripts received • Guarantee perennial access to scholarly for submission in 2007 are subject to an journal digital archives. “introductory fee” of $950. Fees for future • Foster interoperable tools to improve years are not listed on its Web site. knowledge visibility, accessibility, and See www.springer.com/west/home/generic/ dissemination. search/results?SGWID=4-40109-70- • Promote competitive pricing strategies. 173672605-0. • Scrutinize future significant mergers. • Promote the development of electronic Gates Foundation Gives $1.1 publication. Million Grant to PLoS for With regard to public access, the report New Open-Access Journal on says that “the following actions could be Neglected Diseases taken at the European level: (i) Establish The Gates Foundation has given the Public a European policy mandating published Library of Science (PLoS) a $1.1 million articles arising from EC [European grant to launch a new open-access journal Commission]-funded research to be avail- on neglected diseases. The grant is part of able after a given time period in open access a larger Gates initiative to find cures for