Since January 2000, the Entomological Society of America has offered its
authors the option of buying a package of services that will soon be
renamed "Open Access Reprints". For less than the cost of 100 paper
reprints (e.g., $95 for a 7-page article), authors may buy these benefits:
(1) As soon as your article is published, ESA will post the PDF file on its
Web server with access free to all.
(2) You may immediately obtain the PDF file of your article from ESA's
server and post it on your home page and on other publicly accessible web
servers. You may also use it to send your article to colleagues as an
e-mail attachment and to make as many "electronic reprints" of your article
as you wish.
(3) Anyone may freely read or print your article from the Internet and make
as many copies for noncommercial purposes as they wish.
(4) ESA will see that the full text of your article is accessible to the
robots of public search services. For example, Google
(
http://www.google.com) will index the full text of your article on ESA's
server, thereby helping the public find and access the full text of your
article.
QUESTION: Does any other publisher offer their authors a similar, optional
package of services?
My reason for asking this question is that after three years of silence ESA
is planning to tell its members and authors about benefits (2) through
(4). Can I truthfully tell the ESA president that ESA's service is
unique? In other words, is ESA the only publisher that offers the above
package of impact-enhancing services to authors who are willing to pay a
modest price for immediate open access to their refereed, formatted articles.
Note: Authors who sign ESA's copyright agreement cannot legally post the
PDF files of their articles until 2 years after publication.
Note: ESA currently sells Open Access Reprints, under the name "PDF
Reprints," to 55% of its authors. Detailed figures and an account of
ESA's flirtation with selling its authors open access from 1995 through
2002 is at
http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/epub/esaepub.htm.
Note: I am lobbying for ESA to increase its list of benefits. For example,
(5) ESA will post your article on an OAI-compliant server.
(6) ESA will post your article on PubMed Central.
(7) ESA will encourage indexing services such as Current Contents Connect,
Web of Science, Biosis, and CAB Abstracts to hotlink to the full text of
your article.
Note: Florida Entomological Society charges all its authors an open-access
fee, but it is not optional. For details (including the fiscal results)
see
http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/epub/index.htm#epub.
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Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology
PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
E-mail: tjw_at_ufl.edu (or tjwalker_at_mail.ifas.ufl.edu)
FAX: (352)392-0190
Web:
http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/
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Received on Thu Jan 30 2003 - 15:18:06 GMT