Scientific journal publisher ACS Publications, a Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS), has announced a far-reaching expansion of its open access publishing options - including a major new open access journal, more licensing choices for authors and a stimulus program to support authors who select ACS journals when seeking to publish their work open access.
ACS Publications recently appointed Dr. Kevin Davies, Vice President, Business Development and Publisher, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), to lead the development of its new open access initiatives. Prior to joining ACS, Davies served as Editor-in-Chief of Bio-IT World, was former Editor-in-Chief of Cell Press and first established Nature Genetics, serving as its Founding Editor.
The four major components of the Society’s expanded portfolio of open access options include ACS Central Science, ACS Editors’ Choice, ACS Author Rewards and Expanded ACS AuthorChoice.
In the coming year, ACS will introduce a new, open access, peer-reviewed journal, ACS Central Science. The journal will be the first highly selective, society-published, pure open access journal to cover the breadth of chemistry and its interfaces with research across the natural and physical sciences. It will be led by a renowned scientist and an international editorial board, with peer review overseen by active research scientists representative of the journal’s disciplinary and geographic diversity. ACS Central Science will be the ACS’ first completely open access journal.
ACS Editors’ Choice is a new service designed to feature highly innovative research of broad public interest, and to make this material widely accessible. Starting January 2014, drawing on timely recommendations from the more than 400 editors of ACS’ over 40 peer-reviewed journals, who are themselves active researchers, ACS will select and openly feature one new article per day to highlight the newly published work of an author and research team that exemplifies the Society’s commitment to improving people’s lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Articles featured in the ACS Editors’ Choice program will be open access immediately upon publication in the respective journal issue, and these selected articles will remain open for all to access and read.
Recognizing that research communities may require time to fund and transition to new open access publishing models, in 2014 ACS will sponsor a direct-to-author open access stimulus program, ACS Author Rewards. Each article published in ACS journals during 2014 will qualify the corresponding author for ACS Author Rewards article credit. Credits issued under this program, at a total value of $1,500 per publication, may be used to offset article publishing charges and any ACS open access publishing services of the author’s choosing, and will be redeemable over the next three years (2015-2017).
ACS Publications offers its authors an easy and cost-effective route to open access through its ACS AuthorChoice program. Beginning in 2014, authors or their funding sponsors who elect this fee-based option may select from an expanded menu of licensing options to enable the final published article to be openly discoverable and available to readers worldwide, both from the ACS website and other institutional repositories of the author’s choosing. ACS AuthorChoice has been updated to allow authors to choose between immediate or 12-month delayed open access of the final published article of record, depending on their preference and funder requirements. ACS AuthorChoice options provide progressive discounts based on membership in the ACS and the institutional subscriber affiliation of the Corresponding Author.
Additional details on these ACS open access initiatives can be found at www.acsopenaccess.org.
