NAR will adopt an author-funded publishing model for a key section of the journal (the annual Database Issue published in January 2004), with these papers being freely available online from the moment they are published. If successful, the rest of the journal would gradually move to an open access model over a transitional period of 4-5 years, at which point all research published in NAR would be funded in such a way.
"As a University Press we believe in making research as globally accessible as possible", commented Martin Richardson, Director of OUP Journals Division, "but very few well-established journals have made a move to Open Access. NAR is a highly respected international journal, and as such we must ensure that its quality is maintained through continuing to cover the costs that the refereeing process and online publishing incur. Our proposal is to cover these costs through a combination of author charges and subscription revenues, with author charges gradually increasing over time until the model is self-funding. We believe that the adoption of a transitional approach is of vital importance for both authors and readers. Unless funding conventions change, and all authors have access to sufficient financial resources to pay for the full publication costs of their research, it is unlikely that Open Access publishing would be widely adopted by well-established journals."
OUP hopes that its initiative will help lead the way in exploring alternatives to the subscription model that will make research literature as widely accessible as possib
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Contact: Rachel Goode
rachel.goode@oupjournals.org
44-795-749-1505
Oxford University Press
7-Aug-2003