In June 1999, the Entomological Society of America starting offering authors in its journals immediate free Web access for their articles (a.k.a. "electronic reprints"). [It accomplishes this by making the PDF files of the articles freely accessible on its server.] In December, it lowered the price to 75% of the price of 100 paper reprints.
ESA will soon announce to its members this new price and relatively new service. Would it be correct to state in the announcement that ESA is the first scientific society to offer its authors immediate free Web access for a (modest) price? If not, what scientific societies preceded ESA? [The Florida Entomological Society has been giving immediate free Web access to its authors since 1994, but will start charging for it when subscriptions decline.] Tom Walker ========================================================================= Thomas J. Walker Department of Entomology & Nematology University of Florida, PO Box 110620, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620 E-mail: [email protected] FAX: (352)392-0190 Web: http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/tjwbib/walker.htm =========================================================================
