Good news from PNAS

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

PNAS | June 8, 2004 | vol. 101 | no. 23 | 8509

Editorial

Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, Editor-in-Chief

A revolution is taking place in scientific publishing. To leverage the tremendous advantages of electronic publishing and the Internet, journals such as PNAS are making the scientific literature more freely available online than ever before. PNAS has already done the following:

    * We are making PNAS free online to everyone around the world. By the end of this year, all content should be free from the first volume in 1915 to articles published just 6 months ago. The articles will be on our web site (www.pnas.org) and on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central (www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov).
    * We have made PNAS content free online immediately upon publication to 145 countries that are struggling to develop their scientific infrastructure. The list of countries is available at www.pnas.org/misc/faq.shtml.
    * We have changed our copyright and permissions policy to make it easier for authors and readers to freely use material published in PNAS for educational purposes. PNAS now allows authors to post the PDF of their article on their web site, to post and update preprints, and to post webcasts. Anyone may reuse original figures and tables published in PNAS for educational purposes without having to request permission.

In this Editorial, we announce an experimental open access option for PNAS authors, whereby authors may pay a surcharge of $1,000 to make their article freely available online immediately upon publication. We are pleased to note that the first open access article appears in this issue and is by Yang and Purves (1), first published online in PNAS Early Edition on May 19, 2004.

For the full text, click HERE.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Daryl Habel]

Thanks Jacques,

That almost makes my year.  Everything back to 1915?  PNAS has been way out in front of virtually all other paleoanthropology-related journals (save biomolecular-related journals) in offering articles free to the public.   The six-month wait (if necessary), already having  been policy for a couple of years now, is really a quite reasonable delay that, IMO, should somehow similarly be adopted by all journals.

Dar

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Thanks Jacques,

That almost makes my year.  Everything back to 1915?  PNAS has been way out in front of virtually all other paleoanthropology-related journals (save biomolecular-related journals) in offering articles free to the public.   The six-month wait (if necessary), already having  been policy for a couple of years now, is really a quite reasonable delay that, IMO, should somehow similarly be adopted by all journals.

Dar

Well, the year is still young and I am sure that there will be a few more surprises in the e-publication field. What is nice about this back to 1915" access is that it will provide quick and easy access to a huge reservoir of historical information without which it is usually impossible to develop a solid appreciation of and perspective on what historical disciplines like palaeoanthropology are all about.

Jacques Cinq-Mars