The Lancet and open-access research - Achilles' Heal

I’ve always found it entertaining that the Lancet is released on Fridays, presumably satisfying the weekend reading demands of the world’s health science nerds… hence Saturday afternoon finds author idly e-flipping. I’ve developed a new respect for Lancet authors, having been recently rejected by the journal in a peer-review process that can be reasonably likened to a series of conscious colonoscopies – they may by good for you, but it doesn’t make it fun. I’ve written previously on my views on open access in scientific literature – in short, everyone should get access to everything for free, as much as possible. Period. I’ve been waiting for the Lancet to rear its head from behind this particular parapet – with an impact factor of 38.28, where it leads, others will follow.  From the Editors:  'The Lancet journals welcome and support all efforts to make research more widely accessible and useable in ways that continue to sustain our broad mission to serve clinical medicine and global health. We will, in accordance with the new RCUK policy, offer either a 'gold' open access choice with a creative commons license after payment of an article processing charge of US$5000, or a 'green' open access solution—where authors can deposit the final accepted version of their paper in any repository they choose 6 months after publication—for all RCUK-funded research papers submitted after April 1. In addition, for the 'green' open access solution we will also make the published paper free to access on our websites 6 months after publication.'  The high author processing charge not withstanding, this is progress. It currently applies only to RCUK-funded research and hopefully will not end there. But if Lancet can find a way to adapt their business model to an open-source world, others can to.  While you’re over at Lancet.com, catch up on your Syria reading as well."