Access to Clinical Therapeutics

Abstract

Richard I. Shader, MD Clinical Therapeutics is a subscription journal. Like most other scholarly journals, full access to the articles we choose to publish is only available to those who subscribe to the journal. For those without a subscription to Clinical Therapeutics, abstracts of all articles are always fully accessible to read or download. Consistent with our editorial philosophy and publishing goals, we also believe that selected articles should be freely available. For instance, any reader who wants to read or download one of my Editor-in-Chief’s Notes can access the full article without cost. As readers of Clinical Therapeutics, you are probably familiar with our monthly publishing program in which Topic Editors organize the creation of a collection of articles highlighting a specialty theme. We entitle these contributions “Updates.” The articles that comprise each update are designed to present ideas and information based on a current or contemporary theme. Because these collections have the potential to inform a wider audience, we are motivated to make these articles fully and freely available for a limited period of time. Both of the previous examples are what we consider to be free promotional access (ie, a limited time frame in which articles are fully accessible to those who are not subscribers to the journal). Another form of access entitled “open access” has taken hold during the past decade. Open access provides additional opportunities for authors to publish their works and make them fully accessible to the entire scientific community with less restrictive permissions for re-use of the content. The term “open access” was first coined when the Open Society Institute called a meeting in Budapest of its leading proponents. These open access advocates established what is known as the Budapest Open Access Initiative. They defined open access to include free availability on the public Internet, permitting users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles. They also supported licenses to allow use and re-use without financial, legal, or technical barriers, believing that articles should be accessible online without cost to readers. However, they also recognized that there are expenses associated with both print and online publication. Therefore, funding would be needed for authors to produce open access articles. The majority of articles in Clinical Therapeutics incur some costs when users read or download full text. These costs may be covered by individual subscriptions or institutional licenses (eg, hospital and medical school libraries). To cover the costs of making research immediately and permanently available, open access articles require a publication fee. Some funding sources and institutions will reimburse authors for such fees in an arrangement called “gold” open access. “Green” open access is another form of open access in subscription journals in which authors can post their original manuscript (ie, one that has not been peer reviewed or copyedited) to an institutional repository for public use, after a delay period (an embargo) when the final version of their manuscript is published. Clinical Therapeutics only posts fully peer reviewed and copyedited papers. All of our open access articles are covered by a creative commons license. This variation in copyright law gives the holder of the copyright the option of free use and circulation of a work product. For articles in Clinical Therapeutics, our publisher Elsevier holds the copyright because authors sign over the copyright as part of the publication process. Authors who wish to have their accepted manuscripts deemed open access pay a specified