Elsevier's open access plan: Advertisers pay

The New York Times linkurl:reports today;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/business/media/10journal.html?ref=business that scientific and medical publisher Reed-Elsevier, which publishes 400 journals, has introduced ''a Web portal, linkurl:www.OncologySTAT.com, ;www.oncologystat.com that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content.'' In exchange for personal information, oncologists can receive immediate access to cancer-related articles from various Elsevier journals, which include The Lancet. A photo running with the Times story includes the New England Journal of Medicine, which suggests that NEJM -- not published by Elsevier -- will be among the journals whose cancer-related material is available on the site. It turns out, however, that users will only have access to summaries of those articles. The move, linkurl:notes Dean Giustini;http://blog.openmedicine.ca/node/80 at the Open Medicine blog, could be a new way to think about linkurl:open access;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53498/ that wouldn't rely on an author pays model....