American Society for Cell Biology goes open access

The American Society for Cell Biology is the latest scientific institution to set out its stall on wide scale access to its research and content. In its position paper on Public Access to Scientific Literature, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) has announced that all research findings from the ACB will be made freely available online six months after publication.

Articles from ASCB's journal Molecular Biology of the Cell will be freely available on the title's website and also deposited on the PubMed Central service. "The ASCB believes strongly that barriers to scientific communication slow scientific progress. The more widely scientific results are disseminated, the more readily they can be understood, applied, and built upon. The sooner findings are shared, the faster they will lead to new scientific insights and breakthroughs," its position paper states. 

The paper also fires a salvo at publishing companies like Elsevier and Wiley which have hired a dirty tricks PR campaigner to destroy the reputation of open access publishing. "Some publishers argue that providing free access to their journal’s content will catastrophically erode their revenue base. The experience of many successful research journals demonstrates otherwise," it states boldly, adding that journals have remained financially sound and profitable. "The data clearly show that free access and profitability are not mutually exclusive."

"Our goal should be to make research articles freely available as soon as feasible so that science and the public benefit from their expanded use and application. At the same time, it is important that nonprofit societies and other publishers generate sufficient revenues to sustain the costs of reviewing and publishing articles. We believe that a six-month embargo period represents a reasonable compromise between the financial requirements of supporting a journal and the need for access to current research."

The ASCB has 11,000 members and its journal Molecular Biology of the Cell has a high impact factor. Since 2001 the ASCB has provided free access to its research after a two month embargo and claims to have experienced no "adverse impact on its finances."

Moves like this by influential groups like ASCB and the angry reaction of the scientific community when it discovered that Elsevier and Wiley were using negative PR has given the open access movement a renewed vigour.