Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to let you know that we are announcing a major step forward in making AGU research more accessible to scientists and the many sectors of the public that will benefit from a greater understanding of Earth and space science.
Starting 1 May, all AGU journal content from 1997 to content published 24 months ago will be freely available. This change will apply to all articles and supplementary materials from journals that are not already open access, as well as AGU’s weekly newspaper, Eos. This represents a remarkable body of work – 80,000 journal articles and issues of Eos. Additional content will be unlocked every month, on a 24-month rolling cycle.
The Board deliberations on this decision were informed by feedback and insights from the Council, the Publishing Committee, Editors, authors, members and other scientists. The Board considered all of these views carefully, and we unanimously passed the motion to enact the change at the April Board meeting.
This marks an important moment in the execution of our dual responsibilities – to advance our science and support of high-quality research – and to share that knowledge as widely as possible for the benefit of humanity. By unlocking this content on a 24 month rolling schedule, we are providing civic leaders, policymakers, educators, and citizen scientists with access to research that will enable them to develop a deeper understanding of natural hazards, water and air quality, land use, ocean resources, use and monitoring of natural resources and many other critical societal issues. This new option also increases the availability of a significant body of our research to a greater pool of scientists.
I am pleased to also let you know that AGU has joined the Access to Research initiative, in cooperation with Wiley. This program provides patrons of U.K. public libraries free instant online access to journal content from 1997 to the present at the library.
Over this past year, we have successfully introduced several innovations to AGU’s publishing strategy, which already includes providing access to developing nations through our participation in the Research4Life program, enabling more than 5,000 institutions to freely access AGU’s content. In addition to the new programs announced today, AGU offers Green Open Access after six months that allows a copy to be placed in a repository, and we now have three fully open access journals – JAMES,Earth’s Future, and the recently announced Earth and Space Science, which will publish its first articles later this year.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Carol Finn
