Brad Fitzpatrick
Alively and sometimes acrimonious discussion is raging in scientific and publishing circles over the issue of "open access" to the content of scientific journals, where all papers published in a journal are available, at no charge, to everyone from the day they appear in print. Under this model, the costs associated with publishing are borne solely by the authors, or more likely by their funding sources; readers do not pay for access.
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a strong supporter of broad public access to the scientific literature. In 1995, ASBMB's main journal, the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) became the first basic scientific journal to go fully on-line, in partnership with Stanford University's HighWire Press. HighWire Press now hosts on-line editions of 359 journals, including more than 40 of the 100 most-frequently-cited science journals in the world. This translates into about 718,000 ...
