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Please find below the latest news from Oxford Open.

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Mithu

Mithu Mukherjee
Assistant Communications Manager
Oxford Journals

+44(0)1865 354471
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Full year results from Oxford Open show wide variation in open access
uptake across disciplines

Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, today released
full year figures from its optional open access experiment, Oxford Open
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/>. In the first year of
launch, almost 400 papers have been published under the optional open
access model across 36 of the 49 participating titles.  

The majority of uptake of optional open access has, as predicted, been
in the life sciences, with approximately 10% of authors selecting the
open access option across 16 participating journals in this area,
compared with approximately 5% in medicine and public health, and 3% in
the humanities and social sciences. Three life sciences titles in the
areas of molecular and computational biology have seen over 20% uptake.
The highest of these was for Bioinformatics, which has published over 50
open access papers in 2006. 2007 online subscription prices have been
adjusted for these journals to reflect this uptake.

Oxford Open, launched in July 2005, gives authors the option of paying
for their research to be made freely available online immediately upon
publication in the participating journals. Twenty-one titles adopted
this model in July 2005, and further titles have joined in 2006, giving
49 journals participating at present.  

Claire Bird, Senior Editor, Oxford Journals, commented, "we continue to
see wide variation in uptake, and different levels of interest in
'author-pays' open access models between disciplines. The highest uptake
has been in areas where more funding for open access is available, such
as the life sciences, and we would expect this trend to continue in
2007."

Managing Director, Martin Richardson also commented: "We launched Oxford
Open to help foster a better understanding of the advantages and
disadvantages of open access and subscription-based business models.
These results show that while open access is beginning to be embraced in
some subject areas, the level of uptake is generally quite low.  These
results continue to suggest that open access is likely to be only one of
a range of models that will be necessary to support the requirements of
different research communities.

"We remain committed to sharing the results of these experiments with
the community in order to increase knowledge and understanding of open
access, and to help direct us, and other publishers, towards viable
business models for the future."

Oxford Journals will continue to offer optional open access to the 49
participating journals for 2007, in addition to continuing its other
experiments with open access with Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), Journal
of Experimental Botany, and Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative
Medicine (ECAM). It also expects further journals to join the initiative
over the coming year.

Oxford Journals continues to offer two standard charges: 1500 GBP
standard, and a discounted rate of 800 GBP for authors based in an
institution with an online subscription to the journal. 80% of authors
who chose open access in the first year of Oxford Open have paid a
discounted open access charge, as members of a subscribing institution. 

Oxford Open charges will remain the same for authors wishing to publish
open access in 2007. Further reduced charges are also available to
authors in developing countries: see the Oxford Open website, and
participating journal homepages, for further information.

 The online subscription prices of 3 journals (Bioinformatics,
Carcinogenesis and Human Molecular Genetics) have been adjusted for 2007
to reflect how much original research material was made freely available
in the first phase of the initiative in 2005-2006. 

END

For further information please contact:
Mithu Mukherjee
Assistant Communications Manager
Oxford Journals

+44(0)1865 354471
[log in to unmask]


Notes for Editors

The Oxford Open experiment is an optional open access model, allowing
authors the option to pay for their paper to be made freely available
online immediately upon publication. There are 49 journals currently
participating. Read more about the initiative
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/> 

Oxford University Press (OUP) <http://www.oup.co.uk/> , a department of
the University of Oxford, is the world's largest and most international
university press. Founded in 1478, it currently publishes more than
4,500 new books a year, has a presence in over fifty countries, and
employs some 3,700 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions
through a diverse publishing programme that includes scholarly works in
all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks,
children's books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language,
business books, dictionaries and reference books, and journals. Read
more about OUP <http://www.oup.com/about/> 

Oxford Journals <http://www.oxfordjournals.org/>, a Division of OUP,
publishes over 180 journals covering a broad range of subject areas,
two-thirds of which are published in collaboration with learned
societies and other international organizations. The collection contains
some of the world's most prestigious titles, including Nucleic Acids
Research, JNCI (Journal of the National Cancer Institute), Brain, Human
Reproduction, English Historical Review, and the Review of Financial
Studies. Read more about Oxford Journals
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/about_us.html>