APS Opens Access to Research

Beginning April 2005, The American Phytopathological Society (APS) will offer free access to research articles after 24 months of publication in Phytopathology, Plant Disease and Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (MPMI).

For each journal, a two-year-old issue will gain free-access status when the current month’s issue is published on APS’s Web site, www.apsnet.org.

“Allowing free access two years after publication will open a lot of useful research to many who may not have had access to our online journals before,” said Jim MacDonald, APS president. “It is vital to the health of the journals that more scientists cite, use and become acquainted with Society journals,” MacDonald said.

In allowing free access to some of the published APS journal content, APS is not relinquishing copyright. The Society will retain copyright, ensuring that the research remains protected from misuse.

Another improvement, the digitization of all APS journal research published prior to 1997, is planned for the APS online journals. Currently, only issues from 1997 to the present are available online. The initiative to publish the APS journal research archive going back to the very first volume is possible through a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Library. The first of this archival research will be posted in early 2006 and will be available for free.