SPIE celebrates Open Access Week with expanded suite of options

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA -- SPIE joins in the celebration of Open Access Week 2010 (18-24 October) with an expanded suite of open-access options to its scholarly publications on light-based science and technology.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is continuing to develop new models enabling online access without costs or controls required of the reader, in support of its mission to provide the widest possible dissemination of information. Open-access models vary across the publishing world, with some enabled by author-pay programs or grants that cover the costs of publication and ongoing dissemination.

"We look forward to continued exploration of open-access options, informed by discussion with the scientific and engineering communities we serve," said Director of Publication Eric Pepper.

SPIE programs providing open-access to full papers include:

SPIE Letters, a virtual journal of short, rapidly published peer-reviewed articles judged to be of significant originality and interest, and originally published in one of six SPIE journals; available immediately as open-access at the home journal with no charge to authors.
SPIE Reviews, a peer-reviewed journal launched in January 2010, with full-length review articles on important emerging technologies in optics and photonics, including original articles as well as review articles from other SPIE journals.
Author-choice immediate open access, available by author payment in each of six SPIE journals.
Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO) authors may pay for open-access to begin one year after publication. (JBO Letters are open-access immediately with or without the payment.)
Deposit of articles funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in PubMed Central, automatically provided by SPIE at no cost at one year after publication in the SPIE Digital Library.
Conference proceedings of the biennial ETOP (Education and Training in Optics and Photonics) Conference, convening educators from around the world on the practice of teaching optics at all levels.

All abstracts for the more than 300,000 journal articles and conference proceedings papers in the SPIE Digital Library are freely available.

SPIE provides free access to other publications:

The Journal of Photonics for Energy, launching in January 2011. During its first year, all articles will be made available with no charge to authors or to readers. JPE covers fundamental and applied research in applications of photonics for renewable energy harvesting, conversion, storage, distribution, monitoring, consumption, and efficient usage.
The SPIE Newsroom, publishing optics and photonics technical articles written by experts and organized by topical interest area.
Fundamentals of Photonics, 10 tutorial modules written by experts, part of a project funded by the Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD) and the Scientific and Technological Education in Optics and Photonics (STEP), and supported by SPIE and other organizations.
Optipedia, a collection of encyclopedic articles on key topics in optics and photonics. Text, equations, and graphs were originally published in SPIE Press books.

SPIE also provides low- or no-cost subscriptions to institutions and individuals in eligible countries participating in two programs: the eJDS program of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, serving individual researchers; and PERii (the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information), organized by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP). SPIE subscriptions are provided to researchers at nearly 70 institutions through the INASP.

See the full list of SPIE open-access offerings.