Editorial: Creative Commons and ‘Gold’ Open Access for PRST-PER

An editorial by Gene Sprouse explaining the conversion of _Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research_ to hybrid OA. Excerpt: "APS [American Physical Society] has adopted the guiding principle that its journals will embrace open access publishing to the maximum extent possible, consistent with the financial stability of the Society. In essence, we want to provide our journals to anyone who needs or wants them, as long as we have sufficient income to conduct quality peer review, format and publish articles, maintain and update a large archive, and provide tools for readers to find the ideas and information they need to advance the field. Accordingly, as of 15 February 2011, authors in most Physical Review journals will have a new alternative: to pay an article-processing charge whereby their accepted manuscripts will be available barrier-free and open access on publication. These manuscripts will be published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC-BY), the most permissive of the CC licenses, granting authors and others the right to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, provided that proper credit is given. This new alternative is in addition to traditional subscription-funded publication; authors may choose one or the other for their accepted papers....Revenue from the article-processing charges will decrease the need for subscription income and help to keep our subscription price-per-article among the lowest of any physics journals...."