Royal Society hybrid OA trial

The Royal Society has launched a trial of a hybrid open access journal service, allowing free access to selected scientific papers after they are published on the web. The new service offers authors the opportunity to pay a fee to have their paper made Open Access immediately if it is accepted for publication by any Royal Society journal. The first paper to be published under the new service appears on the Royal Society's website today.

The new open access journal service, called EXiS Open Choice, is being tested by the Royal Society to see if it provides a viable way of sustaining the costs of peer review and other aspects of journal production. Authors who choose to pay to make their papers immediately available on the web will be charged a full cost of £300 per A4 page, although the Society will initially be offering a discounted rate of £225 per A4 page to encourage authors to use the service.

The EXiS Open Choice is being offered to authors of papers that are accepted for publication in any of the Royal Society's seven journals.

This hybrid OA option is similar to that offered by PNAS, Springer, CoB, Blackwells and many of OUP's journals.