Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, today released full year figures from its optional open access experiment, Oxford Open (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/). In the first year of launch, almost 400 papers have been published under the optional open access model across 36 of the 49 participating titles.

The majority of uptake of optional open access has, as predicted, been in the life sciences, with approximately 10% of authors selecting the open access option across 16 participating journals in this area, compared with approximately 5% in medicine and public health, and 3% in the humanities and social sciences. Three life sciences titles in the areas of molecular and computational biology have seen over 20% uptake. The highest of these was for Bioinformatics, which has published over 50 open access papers in 2006. 2007 online subscription prices have been adjusted for these journals to reflect this uptake.

Oxford Open, launched in July 2005, gives authors the option of paying for their research to be made freely available online immediately upon publication in the participating journals. Twenty-one titles adopted this model in July 2005, and further titles have joined in 2006, giving 49 journals participating at present.

Claire Bird, Senior Editor, Oxford Journals, commented, "we continue to see wide variation in uptake, and different levels of interest in 'author-pays' open access models between disciplines. The highest uptake has been in areas where more funding for open access is available, such as the life sciences, and we would expect this trend to continue in 2007."

Managing Director, Martin Richardson also commented: "We launched Oxford Open to help foster a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of open access and subscription-based business models. These results show that while open access is beginning to be
'"/>

Contact: Mithu Mukherjee
mithu.mukherjee@oxfordjournals.org
01-865-354-471
Oxford University Press
30-Aug-2006