Research articles over 4 weeks old will soon be available free at the PNAS web site, www.pnas.org, and at PubMed Central, the National Institutes of Health online repository at www.PubMedCentral.nih.gov. Both archives will date back to 1990.
Added to more recent content (from 1996 onward) are almost 15,000 articles (more than 70,000 pages) from 1990 through 1995, which were digitized through a joint venture with JSTOR. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that is dedicated to helping the scholarly community take advantage of advances in information technologies.
PNAS granted permission for JSTOR to digitize issues dating back to volume 1 (1915). This extensive PNAS archive will be available online at www.jstor.org for a licensing fee determined by JSTOR.
Expanding the number of free back issues is PNAS's third online initiative for 2000. In the first issue of this year, we announced that PNAS is a founding participant in PubMed Central. In the second issue, we reported that PNAS articles are published electronically in a feature called PNAS Early Edition soon after they are accepted.
These three innovations by PNAS will advance and broaden scientific dissemination. As the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences, we strive to take a leadership role in scientific publishing. We also have a more parochial interest. We hope that these changes will entice authors to publish their best work in PNAS to take advantage of rapid publication and worldwide barrier-free distribution.
The costs of all three enterprises are relatively modest and were absorbed into our operating budget. In fact, the journal's financial position is sufficiently strong that we sharply reduced author costs this year. Page charges were reduced by 30%, and color charges were reduced by up to 50%. We do not anticipate that making content free online will significantly undermine subscription and author revenue. We foresee that most institutions will maintain their print subscriptions.
Why then have so few journals joined us in providing free back issues, fast online release, and free content to PubMed Central? These were easy decisions for PNAS, and I am convinced that any poll of journal readers, authors, and subscribers or of scientific society members would show overwhelming support for these ventures.