Press Release: New "Open Access" Initiative from Oxford Journals

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Thursday 7 August, 2003

New "Open Access" Initiative from Oxford Journals

Oxford University Press (OUP) is initiating an Open Access experiment with
one of its flagship journals, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), recently
listed by ISI as one of the top ten "hottest" journals of the decade in
biology and biochemistry.* This initiative is in response to calls from
the academic community to make research freely available online without
the barrier of a subscription to access.

NAR will adopt an author-funded publishing model for a key section of the
journal (the annual Database Issue published in January 2004), with these
papers being freely available online from the moment they are published.  
If successful, the rest of the journal would gradually move to an open
access model over a transitional period of 4-5 years, at which point all
research published in NAR would be funded in such a way.

"As a University Press we believe in making research as globally
accessible as possible," commented Martin Richardson, Director of OUP
Journals Division, "but very few well-established journals have made a
move to Open Access.  NAR is a highly respected international journal, and
as such we must ensure that its quality is maintained through continuing
to cover the costs that the refereeing process and online publishing
incur.  Our proposal is to cover these costs through a combination of
author charges and subscription revenues, with author charges gradually
increasing over time until the model is self-funding. We believe that the
adoption of a transitional approach is of vital importance for both
authors and readers. Unless funding conventions change, and all authors
have access to sufficient financial resources to pay for the full
publication costs of their research, it is unlikely that Open Access
publishing would be widely adopted by well-established journals."

OUP hopes that its initiative will help lead the way in exploring
alternatives to the subscription model that will make research literature
as widely accessible as possible.

For further information contact:
Rachel Goode, Communications Manager
Journals Division, Oxford University Press
Email: rachel.goode@oupjournals.org
www.oupjournals.org

Oxford University Press (OUP) is a department of the University of
Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in
research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP
publishes over 180 journals, two-thirds of which are published in
collaboration with learned societies and other international
organisations.

*Source: Science Watch  (May/June 2003) Essential Science Indicators -
High-Impact Journals in 9 Fields, Ranked by Citations Per Paper,
1992-2002 (Among non-review journals that published continuously,
January 1992 to December 2002)