Blackwell opens its arms to OA

Author pays offered in Blackwell experiment Online Open

Society publishers Blackwell Publishing has entered the Open Access (OA) fray with the launch of Online Open, an author pays model. Blackwell has adopted an author choice and payment scheme similar to Springer Open Choice, announced last year.

Authors choosing Online Open will pay a publication fee for their articles to be published both within a journal and for perpetuity on the Blackwell Synergy online service. Print articles will feature an icon indicating that they are available online for free.

"The calls for open access publishing have encouraged us to offer a range of options from which authors and readers can choose," said Rene Olivieri, CEO of Blackwell Publishing.

Authors will pay £1250 ($2500) to publish an accepted article with Online Open, which is under trial until the end of 2006. Blackwell said it will amend the subscription price of journals that participate in Online Open to reflect the number of author pays reports published each year.

"Publishing journals online is still in its infancy and we are likely to see a range of business models emerge over the next 10 years," said Blackwell's Gordon Tibbitts, of the mixed economy that is emerging in journal publishing. The Oxford based publisher will closely monitor the results of the experiment and share the results with the societies it publishes for.

"Blackwell developed this service so that those authors with the appropriate funding and who want to make their articles available through open access don't need to find alternative publications for their work," said Bob Campbell, Blackwell Publishing President.

Details of which Blackwell published titles will adopt Online Open has not been released yet, Blackwell said it is consulting with the societies it publishes for to see who will join. Blackwell expects biology and medicine titles to be the lead adopters.