Science Enters Open Access Arena with Science Advances
peter.suber's bookmarks 2014-02-20
Summary:
"One of the biggest names in scholarly publishing announced it was entering the open access ecosystem on February 14, as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced that it would launch Science Advances, an online only, open access journal covering the same broad range of research topics addressed by the AAAS flagship journal, Science. The entry of Science into the open access landscape was dictated by several factors, not the least of which was advocacy from librarians and the researchers they work with....Science Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt...also said the success of open access publishers like Public Library of Science (PLOS) gave AAAS, which publishes Science and its sister journals Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling, the confidence to forge ahead with an open access publication of its own....Joseph also suspects that there’s one other factor prodding traditional publishers like AAAS and the Royal Society of London, which announced on February 18 that it will be debuting its own open access journal in the fall of 2014, into the open access landscape—new mandates requiring that an increasing percentage of government-funded research be published in open journals that are accessible to all readers. “Mandates have had a big effect on the marketplace,” said Joseph, who attributes such policies to a recent acceleration in the pace at which traditional publishers are offering open access alternatives. “It will become a competitive disadvantage not to have an open access option for your journal.” ...Expanding the number of articles the AAAS publishes every year was also a major driver behind the decision to launch the nimbler, less overhead-intensive Science Advances, which McNutt said aims to publish several thousand articles every year by its fifth year in business. By comparison, Science publishes less than one thousand a year, or about six percent of the submissions it receives. “We’ve got three times that many articles that we review and improve and then send to get published in journals elsewhere, simply because we don’t have the room to publish them,” said McNutt, calling the process “the most inefficient business model you can imagine.” ..."