JISC funds publishers to deliver free open access journals

Following the success of the first two years of the programme, the decision has been made to award three publishers funds to support open access delivery for their journals.

A total of £84,500 will be awarded to some of the most important scholarly titles in their fields. These are: New Journal of Physics (published by the Institute of Physics Publishing); the journals of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr); and the Journal of Medical Genetics (BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.). All three are previous recipients of funding from earlier rounds of this programme, a level of continuity that increases the growing evidence base provided by the programme, which is to be formally evaluated early next year.

Peter Strickland, Managing Editor of IUCr, said: "As a result of the JISC funding so far, I am strongly convinced that providing authors the opportunity to make their papers open access works well, provides authors with extra choice and improves access to published content. The funding of IUCr journals has allowed UK authors to publish over 570 open access articles; 255 in 2004 and 322 to date in 2005."

Ken Lillywhite, Journals Business Director at Institute of Physics Publishing, said: "We are delighted that, for a third year running, JISC will be supporting New Journal of Physics and the UK physics community. NJP has already grown substantially since the first round of funding and we are pleased to be able to continue providing this publishing choice to research physicists in the UK."

Andrea Horgan, Managing Editor of BMJ Journals, said: 'Earlier JISC funds have enabled us to compare the profile and usage of open access papers with those that are behind closed access to gauge author responses in both cases. This involves randomisation of papers to ensure the integrity of the results. This is an ongoing process and the additional grant money will allow us to randomise a further 20 papers from UK authors (10 to open access) to gather further evidence about this model.'

Lorraine Estelle, JISC Collections Team Manager, said: 'This programme continues to provide us with much-needed evidence about the impact of open access models of publishing on the conduct and dissemination of research. We are delighted that sustained investment over three years has proved successful for these journals, and we look forward to making the results of the full evaluation of the programme available to the academic and research community in due course.'

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