Open Access publisher De Gruyter Open has announced that it will publish a group of eight Central European Journals now distributed in subscription model by Springer and turn them to Open Access, starting with volume 2015. This is a move unprecedented for a group of STM journals, being supplemented by three new launches in the humanities.
The publication of the Central European Journals began twelve years ago by the Polish company Versita, which was acquired and subsequently renamed by De Gruyter. Each of the journals covers one broad discipline. The journals have Nobel Prize laureates among their editorial board members and authors, such as Frank Wilczek, Elias J. Corey, Martin Karplus, Roald Hoffman, and Timothy Hunt.
The editorial boards of the journals support the conversion of their publication to Open Access. In a bid to serve the best interests of authors, readers and editors, and to reflect the all-encompassing scopes of the converted journals, De Gruyter Open has renamed all the former entries with the following titles: Open Mathematics (formerly Central European Journal of Mathematics); Open Physics (formerly Central European Journal of Physics); Open Chemistry (formerly Central European Journal of Chemistry); Open Life Sciences (formerly Central European Journal of Biology); Open Medicine (formerly Central European Journal of Medicine); Open Geosciences (formerly Central European Journal of Geosciences); Open Engineering (formerly Central European Journal of Engineering); and Open Computer Science (formerly Central European Journal of Computer Science). In volume 2013, these journals published over one thousand articles.
Besides the journals that are being converted from subscription to Open Access, De Gruyter Open is launching new mega journals in the humanities - Open Linguistics, Open Theology and Open Archaeology.
