A surprising new open access policy issued this week by the American Psychological Association (APA) is being reconsidered and will not be implemented at this time, according to a statement by the publisher.

In contrast to Nature Publishing Group's announcement last week that it was taking a step toward aiding open access, the APA announced this week that it will charge authors' institutions a $2500 fee for accepted manuscripts to be deposited in PubMed Central 12 months after publication. Nor would the APA allow authors to deposit to the repository on their own -- something that most other publishers permit -- or retain copyright of the manuscript.

Both APA's and Nature's announcements are part of publishers' efforts to comply with a mandate adopted this year by the National Institutes of Health requiring any papers stemming from NIH funds to be deposited in PubMed Central.

A statement sent to The Scientist today from APA Publisher Gary VandenBos said: "A new document deposit policy...is currently being re-examined and will not be implemented at this time...APA will soon be releasing more detailed information about the complex issues involved in the implementation of the new NIH Public Access Policy."

VandenBos was not available for further comment.

This is basically as bad as it gets when it comes to publishers' open access policy, Peter Suber, open access advocate, wrote on his blog yesterday. He told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the fee is a waste of money and submission to PubMed Central can easily be done by a machine.

The APA's policy is more restrictive than that of several other publishers'. The American Chemical Society, Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, and the American Physiological Society all allow authors to submit their articles to PubMed Central themselves 12 months after publication. For fees ranging from $1000 to $3250 these publishers will deposit manuscripts into PubMed Central immediately.