Journal editors are expressing enthusiastic support for a new open access option announced recently by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
The new program provides Gold Open Access upon publication for a journal article for which authors or their institutions pay voluntary page charges, beginning in January 2013. Authors will retain copyright under the Creative Commons CC-BY license. In adding to the options available to authors and readers, the program gives SPIE even more cause to recognise Open Access Week 2012 (October 22-28), organised by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
The new programme covers articles published in Optical Engineering, Journal of Biomedical Optics, Journal of Electronic Imaging (co-published with IS&T), Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Journal of Nanophotonics and Journal of Photonics for Energy.
Chris Mack, Editor of the Journal of Microlithography, MEMS, and MOEMS (JM3), and Akhlesh Lakhtakia of Pennsylvania State University, Editor of the Journal of Nanophotonics, both acknowledged the complex economics of journal publishing in praising the new program.
SPIE is also celebrating Open Access Week by opening selected papers from the SPIE Digital Library authored by 2012 Nobel Laureates. These papers will be freely accessible through 2012.
To support researchers in developing or low-income countries, SPIE participates in the eJDS program of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, providing papers on demand to individual scientists, and the Information Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications PERii program, providing access to libraries in developing nations at no or very low cost.
