Plant Physiology®
The Plant Cell
Open Access Experiment

The Open Access movement in scholarly publishing advocates that research content should be freely available to all immediately upon publication. This approach has caused publishers to examine the feasibility of a shift from traditional subscription-based ("user pays") financial models to an "author-pays" model, in which the cost of publication is typically borne by authors. ASPB currently derives about 65% of its publications revenues from its institutional subscriptions, with the remainder coming from membership and nonmember individual subscriptions, page and color charges paid by the authors, and small advertising and royalty revenues.

What does our author community think about Open Access? Are Plant Cell and Plant Physiology® authors willing to pay to have their articles made free online immediately upon publication? To gauge the plant science community's interest in this new approach to publishing and to help ASPB determine the viability of "author-pays" publishing models, the Society is conducting an 18-month Open Access experiment. Beginning with the December 2005 issues of Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell, authors of articles accepted by the journals will be given the option to pay a surcharge to make their online article freely accessible from the moment of publication to anyone with Internet access. The surcharge, in addition to the usual author charges, was originally set at $1,000, discounted to $750 for authors working at subscribing institutions. It was increased to $1,500 for Plant Physiology and $2,000 for The Plant Cell in January 2009, and remains discounted to $750 if the author’s institution subscribes to the journal. The offer to participate in the experiment will be extended to authors upon acceptance and will have absolutely no impact on the peer review process or whether a paper is accepted for publication.

Open Access articles will be so indicated on eToCs (our electronic content alerts [sign up at http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/alerts/etoc and http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/alerts/etoc]), on the print and online table of contents, and on the opening page of the article itself, both online and in print. Authors who decline the Open Access option will pay their normal author charges, and their papers will be accessible via member/nonmember individual or institutional subscription, or pay-per-view, for the first 12 months, according to established ASPB practice. After 12 months, access to these articles will be made free per present journal policy.

ASPB will be following the uptake of the Open Access option among authors and tracking usage of Open Access compared to subscription access articles. At the end of the 18-month period, ASPB will use this and other information to help inform future decisions about Open Access publishing.

The Model
The average actual cost to ASPB to publish a research article in Plant Physiology®, online only, is about $2,500; for The Plant Cell that figure is around $3,500. Thus, the $1,000 surcharge partially reflects the expense incurred in publishing a top-quality plant science journal. As for the discount to authors from subscribing institutions, it is intended to reinforce to the Society's library community ASPB's recognition that free access to the primary research literature is a worthy goal and one to which the Society is committed. In addition, this discount is intended to provide a concrete benefit to those institutions and their potential authors for their continued institutional subscription.

Copyright
There is no change in ASPB's copyright policy related to the Open Access experiment. Authors will continue to transfer copyright to the Society, and ASPB will continue to allow its authors to reuse their material without requesting permission from the Society.

The Journals Today
ASPB is committed to the broad dissemination of the content of its journals. ASPB members already have free online access to both journals as a benefit of membership in the Society. Additionally, ASPB participates in AGORA (http://www.aginternetwork.org/en), an initiative of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and will soon join HINARI (http://www.who.int/hinari/en), the counterpart World Health Organization initiative, to offer many dozens of developing nations immediate free access to all articles. The research content of ASPB journals is currently free online 12 months after publication. For those unable to access the journals via an institutional or member/nonmember individual subscription, there is pay-per-view, which entitles the user to 48 hours' access to the online article for $8. Another option, pay-per-access, gives unlimited online access to the entire journal site for 14 days for $20. Furthermore, ASPB has participated in NIH's PubMed Central for the past five years, making our content freely available there, too, after 12 months. Readers will find a free archive of both journals--back to 1989 for The Plant Cell and to 1926 for Plant Physiology®--on PubMed Central as well.

The Future
The journals welcome feedback on the Open Access experiment at any time. Please e-mail the director of publications, Nancy Winchester, with your comments. As the experiment progresses, we will share what we learn with our editors, authors, readers, and members.

The Open Access option is available to authors accepted for publication beginning with the December 2005 issues.