ACS Broadens Article Access

SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

The American Chemical Society is broadening access to research articles published in its scholarly journals. The society is introducing two experimental policies that define how readers can view free digital versions of the articles beginning one year after publication.

The first policy represents a response to public access guidelines recently released by the National Institutes of Health (C&EN, Feb. 7, page 23). NIH encourages authors whose work it funds to submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central, the agency's free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. ACS has decided to take on the task of submission to PubMed Central on behalf of its authors, according to Robert D. Bovenschulte, president of the society's Publications Division. ACS will authorize PubMed Central to make the authors' versions of unedited manuscripts available to the public 12 months after the edited, final articles are published by ACS.

ACS's second policy experiment may have even more far-reaching consequences. ACS authors already had the right to distribute up to 50 free digital reprints by directing interested readers to a unique ACS website address for their final published articles. Now ACS will allow unlimited free access to published articles via these same author-directed online links by eliminating the limit one year after publication.

Other publishers are exploring a range of access options. Science , for example, allows free online access to its articles one year after publication. The Public Library of Science, which is supported by grants, donations, and memberships, offers immediate, free online access to its journal articles.