PNAS Introduces Open Access Publishing Option

["Allen, Kerri" <KAllen@nas.edu>]

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) currently
offers an open access publishing option. PNAS authors may opt to pay a
$1000 surcharge to make their articles available for free via PNAS Online
<http://www.pnas.org/> and PubMed Central <www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov>
immediately upon publication.

PNAS will offer this open access option as an experiment until December
31, 2005. PNAS will then either continue to move toward an author-pays
open access model, maintain the option in the same or modified form, or
discontinue it. By introducing this trial option, PNAS strengthens its
commitment to making the scientific literature more freely available than
ever before, and hopes that its support of open access will encourage
other scientific publishers to follow suit. PNAS will evaluate author
participation and the financial impact of the open access option on PNAS
revenue.

"The benefits to science of unfettered access to the literature are
obvious," says Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, PNAS Editor-in-Chief. "Open access
publishing offers the immediate release of scientific results to everyone
without the delay and cost of obtaining research articles through journal
subscriptions. The challenge of open access is how to pay for it. This is
particularly important for PNAS, which operates as a nonprofit, break-even
operation and does not maintain contingency funds or capital reserves.
PNAS is starting by experimenting with an open access option for authors.
It is a compromise between open access for all articles and doing business
as usual." The first open access article is by Yang and Purves, published
online in PNAS Early Edition on May 19, 2004.

The open access option was approved overwhelmingly by the PNAS Editorial
Board and unanimously approved by the Publications Committee of the
National Academy of Sciences, which has oversight over PNAS. The decision
was informed by a survey of 610 corresponding authors of accepted papers
conducted from August 22 to October 30, 2003. Of the 210 responses
received, almost one-half (49.5%) of the respondents were in favor of an
open access option.

The experiment is PNAS's latest initiative to promote the broad
dissemination of science. Since January 2000, PNAS has provided free
access to back issues online, and makes PNAS content free at both the PNAS
Online and PubMed Central web sites 6 months after publication. Special
features and papers from the National Academy of Sciences colloquia, as
well as multimedia online supporting information, are available for free
immediately upon publication. In addition, PNAS offers 145 developing
countries free and immediate access to all journal content.

Established in 1914 as the flagship journal of the National Academy of
Sciences, PNAS publishes high-impact research reports, commentaries,
reviews, special features, colloquium papers, and actions of the Academy.
PNAS is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal that spans the
biological, physical, and social sciences. The journal is printed weekly
(52 issues per year) and publishes new content online each business day.
Ranked by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the world's
most-cited scientific serials, PNAS Online receives more than 1.5 million
hits per week. The journal is a self-sustaining operation that is not
funded by the National Academy of Sciences or the government. For more
information, please visit http://www.pnas.org <http://www.pnas.org/> .

For more information, please contact: 
Bridget Coughlin, Managing Editor
202-334-1370
e-mail <BCoughlin@nas.edu>