Washington D.C. Principles For Free Access to Science

DC Principles Media Statement

DC Principles Statement

WASHINGTON, DC - As scholarly, not-for-profit publishers, we reaffirm our commitment to innovative and independent publishing practices and to promoting the wide dissemination of information in our journals. Not-for-profit scientific, technical, and medical publishers are an integral part of the broader scholarly communities supporting scientists, researchers, and clinicians. We work in partnership with scholarly communities to ensure that these communities are sustained and extended, science is advanced, research meets the highest standards, and patient care is enhanced with accurate and timely information.

We continue to support broad access to the scientific and medical literature through the following publishing principles and practices.

1. As not-for-profit publishers, we see it as our mission to maintain and enhance the independence, rigor, trust, and visibility that have established scholarly journals as reliable filters of information emanating from clinical and laboratory research.

2. As not-for-profit publishers, we reinvest all of the revenue from our journals in the direct support of science worldwide, including scholarships, scientific meetings, grants, educational outreach, advocacy for research funding, the free dissemination of information for the public, and improvements in scientific publishing.

3. As not-for-profit publishers, we have introduced and will continue to support the following forms of free access:

• Selected important articles of interest are free online from the time of publication;
• The full text of our journals is freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher's business and publishing requirements;
• The content of our journals is available free to scientists working in many low-income nations;
• Articles are made available free online through reference linking between these journals;
• Our content is available for indexing by major search engines so that readers worldwide can easily locate information.

4. We will continue to work to develop long-term preservation solutions for online journals to ensure the ongoing availability of the scientific literature.

5. We will continue to work with authors, peer-reviewers, and editors for the development of robust online and electronic tools to improve efficiency of their important intellectual endeavors.

6. We strongly support the principle that publication fees should not be borne solely by researchers and their funding institutions, because the ability to publish in scientific journals should be available equally to all scientists worldwide, no matter what their economic circumstances.

7. As not-for-profit publishers, we believe that a free society allows for the co-existence of many publishing models, and we will continue to work closely with our publishing colleagues to set high standards for the scholarly publishing enterprise.

The following not-for-profit publishers endorse the above principles:

American Academy of Pediatrics
Pediatrics
Pediatrics in Review
NeoReviews

American Association for Cancer Research
Cancer Research
Clinical Cancer Research
Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention
Molecular Cancer Therapeutics
Molecular Cancer Research

American Association for Clinical Chemistry
Clinical Chemistry

American Cancer Society
CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
American College of Chest Physicians
CHEST

American College of Nutrition
Journal of the American College of Nutrition

American College of Physicians
Annals of Internal Medicine
ACP Journal Club

American Dairy Science Association
Journal of Dairy Science

American Diabetes Association
Diabetes
Diabetes Care
Diabetes Spectrum
Clinical Diabetes

American Physiological Society
American Journal of Physiology (AJP)
AJP - Cell Physiology
AJP - Endocrinology and Metabolism
AJP - Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology
AJP - Heart and Circulatory Physiology
AJP - Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology
AJP - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology
AJP - Renal Physiology
Journal of Applied Physiology
Journal of Neurophysiology
Physiological Reviews
Physiological Genomics
Advances in Physiology Education
News in Physiological Sciences

American Psychiatric Publishing
American Journal of Psychiatry
Psychiatric Services
Psychosomatics
Academic Psychiatry
American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research
Journal of Neuropsychiatry and
Clinical Neurosciences

American Roentgen Ray Society
American Journal of Roentgenology

American Society of Animal Science
Journal of Animal Science

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The Journal of Biological Chemistry
Molecular and Cellular Proteomics
Journal of Lipid Research

American Society for Clinical Investigation
Journal of Clinical Investigation

American Society for Clinical Nutrition
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

American Society for Microbiology
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology
Clinical Microbiology Reviews
Eukaryotic Cell
Infection and Immunity
Journal of Bacteriology
Journal of Clinical Microbiology
Journal of Virology
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews
Molecular and Cellular Biology

American Society for Nutritional Sciences
The Journal of Nutrition

American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Pharmacological Reviews
Molecular Pharmacology
Drug Metabolism and Disposition
Molecular Interventions

American Society of Hematology
Blood

American Society for Investigative Pathology
The American Journal of Pathology
The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics

American Society of Clinical Oncology
Journal of Clinical Oncology

American Society of Plant Biologists
Plant Physiology
The Plant Cell

Association for Molecular Pathology
The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics

Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science

Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities
Journal of Biomolecular Techniques

Biophysical Society
Biophysical Journal

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Genes & Development
Genome Research
Learning & Memory
Protein Science
RNA

Company of Biologists Limited
Development
Journal of Cell Science
Journal of Experimental Biology

European Molecular Biology Organisation
The EMBO Journal
EMBOreports

Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
FASEB Journal

Genetics Society of America
Genetics

Project Hope
Health Affairs

Protein Society
Protein Science

Radiological Society of North America
Radiology
RadioGraphics

Royal College of Psychiatrists
British Journal of Psychiatry
Psychiatric Bulletin
Advances in Psychiatric Treatment

Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine
Experimental Biology and Medicine

Society for Leukocyte Biology
Journal of Leukocyte Biology

Society for the Study of Reproduction
Biology of Reproduction

Society of Nuclear Medicine
Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
The Journal of Nuclear Medicine

Society of Surgical Oncology
Annals of Surgical Oncology

The American Society of Nephrology
Journal of the American Society of Nephrology

The Botanical Society of America
American Journal of Botany
Plant Science Bulletin

The Endocrine Society
Endocrine Reviews
Endocrinology
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Molecular Endocrinology
Recent Progress in Hormone Research

The Histochemical Society
Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry

The Physiological Society
The Journal of Physiology

The Rockefeller University Press
The Journal of Cell Biology
The Journal of Experimental Medicine
The Journal of General Physiology

Harvey Whitney Books
The Annals of Pharmacotherapy

Society of National Association Publications
Representing 265 publications

Backgound: Since 1995, more than 100 society and university not-for-profit publishers have been working with Stanford University's HighWire Press to transform traditional print journals into enduring and dynamic online journals. These publishers have invested millions of dollars in online technology for information presentation, distribution, and management; created unique and powerful online services for the education and convenience of scientists; initiated some of the largest and most influential experiments in online-only publishing; led the charge in making information free to people who cannot afford to pay for it; and developed state-of-the-art software to support authors, reviewers, and editors. By effectively harnessing new technologies, these not-for-profit society and university publishers have promoted the wider dissemination of scientific information as well as free and unfettered access to journal content for both the scientific community and the public. In so doing, these not-for-profit publishers have become leaders in the online revolution for scientific publishing.

Through these not-for-profit publishers, the scientific community and the public have easy online access to over 1.6 million articles of which more than 600,000 full-text articles are free. In addition, access is provided to the abstracts of more than 12.6 million articles in more than 4,500 Medline journals, as well as useful alerting and information management tools.

The experiments that have been conducted since 1995 and that are ongoing have only been possible because these not-for-profit publishers have been successfully adapting their proven business models to the online environment. As a result, these society and university press journals remain high impact and well-respected custodians of the scientific literature. Through numerous organizations that serve the entire scholarly publishing community, not-for-profit publishers have freely shared their ideas and innovations, with the common goal of improving the dissemination of vital scientific and medical information throughout the world.