APS extends open access to all its journals

Physics research promoter and publisher the American Physical Society (APS) is to extend open access to all its journals.

The APS previously made its five print journals available through subscriptions, and its two e-journals (Physical Review Special Topics and Physics Education Research) on an open access basis.

Payment of a $975 (£514) publication fee will secure the free online availability of any article from Physical Review A-E (the fee for Physical Review Letters articles is $1,300). The model covers all articles, including those from the APS archive, which stretches back to 1893, should any philanthropic sponsors wish to pay for articles to be released online for free.

Tom McIlrath, APS treasurer and publisher, said the society had been keen to keep the fee low to make it as attractive as possible to authors, particularly those outside the US and Europe.

The society had been discussing ways of introducing open access for some time, said McIlrath. The difficulty, he said, lay in enabling authors to publish open access articles without significantly impacting subscription revenue.

“Any economic model has to be sustainable,” he said. “If we get a lot of requests this way, we can lower subscription prices further. If it begins to be a predominant path for authors to take, we’ll have to reconsider, because it begins to eat into our subscription fees.”

McIlrath said the APS welcomed feedback about open access, and had already had a positive response from Cern, the European organisation for nuclear research based in Geneva, and home to some of the world’s leading physicists.