Re: Sponsored Articles In Elsevier Journals

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

This announcement by Elsevier of an open access option for 
physics authors is welcome but not entirely unexpected. The 
commercial risk to Elsevier from losing authors to those journals 
which do offer an open access option must be too great for 
Elsevier to ignore, particularly in the light of an initiative by 
CERN announced at the Berlin 4 Open Access meeting on discussions 
with publishers about conversion of the major physics journals to 
OA. We await further details of the Elsevier scheme, but two 
points strike me immediately. Firstly Elsevier are proposing to 
charge authors colour charges on top of the OA fee, whereas some 
other publishers make no additional charge. And secondly there is 
no mention by Elsevier of a reduction in subscription rates as OA 
income increases. Again publishers vary in their policy on this. 
Some are playing fair on this point but others may be using OA 
income simply to boost profits. However, we are now beginning to 
see a situation where the differences between publishers on such 
issues are more transparent, and authors will be able to make an 
informed choice.

Frederick J. Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Menefee, Daviess (ELS)" <D.Menefee@elsevier.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 11:51 PM
Subject: Sponsored Articles In Elsevier Journals

> Please excuse any duplication.
>
> From May onwards some Elsevier journals will be offering to 
> their authors the option to pay a sponsorship fee to ensure 
> that their article, already accepted for publication, is made 
> freely available to non-subscribers via ScienceDirect.
>
> Worldwide approximately 10 million researchers can already 
> access these journals through institutional subscriptions. In a 
> few instances, authors publishing in these journals have 
> requested an option to make their articles freely available 
> online to non-subscribers.
>
> Six journals in Physics are the first to offer such an option.
> These are:
>
> Nuclear Physics A
> Nuclear Physics B
> Nuclear Physics B Proceedings Supplements
> Nuclear Instruments and Methods A
> Physics Letters B
> Astroparticle Physics
>
> Thirty more journals across other fields such as Life and Health
> sciences also plan to offer this option in the next two months.
>
> The author charge for article sponsorship is $3,000.  The fee
> excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color
> charges which are additional. Information about selecting this
> option is now available on the journal homepages at
> www.elsevier.com as well as Elsevier's author gateway site,
> authors.elsevier.com.  The availability of this option will be
> offered to authors of the above-mentioned journals only after
> receiving notification that their article has been accepted for
> publication.  This prevents a potential conflict of interest
> where a journal would have a financial incentive to accept an
> article.
>
> Please feel free to contact either of us or your Elsevier
> representative with any questions.
>
> Tony McSean, Daviess Menefee
>
> Library Relations
> Elsevier