The Royal Society of Chemistry has launched its own hybrid journal program. Read the press release.
Authors of RSC journal papers can now choose to have their research freely available the moment it is published – for a fee….
The RSC has been critical of such open access (OA) publishing models in the past but Robert Parker, RSC publishing’s editorial director, said the move was business-minded to keep RSC publishing competitive. ‘We need to position ourselves so that we have a basis for any potential new source of income or financial model,’ he said, ‘within the remit of serving the chemistry community and disseminating chemistry.’
In the same vein as the ACS model (American Chemical Society’s Author’s Choice), the RSC will offer authors whose papers have satisfied the peer review process the option to pay a fee for their article to be made freely available. The basic fee for a primary research article will be £1600….
Despite the increasing emergence of OA publishing, neither the RSC nor ACS is optimistic about its financial benefits or popularity among the chemistry community. Parker told Chemistry World that he predicted a low uptake of fewer than 100 OA papers in the next year and warned that any quick move to the full OA scenario would pose ‘a challenge to learned societies’….
The RSC posting today on CHEMICAL INFORMATION SOURCES DISCUSSION LIST has more detail:
RSC Open Science goes one step further than similar services provided by other chemical science publishers — all article types, not just primary research papers, published in RSC Journals are eligible for inclusion in this scheme. This ensures that the RSC continues to support all authors at every stage of their research programme….
Authors who have published their work in RSC journals will also be able to retrospectively apply for their work to be included in the scheme.
Fees for RSC Open Science in 2007 are dependent on the article type published:
• Communications £1000
• Primary Paper £1600
• Review £2500
A 15% discount will be applied to fees for authors who are RSC members [and some others].
There are still more details on the RSC Open Science FAQ.
Open Access News, 10/3/06