Not necessarily a reply to Rick, but note that what is being offered is
OA to the pre-2003 archives of the NPG-published academic and society
journals.  Archives of Nature-branded titles will not be OA.  If they
were, there would be no need to sign an agreement to guarantee access.

(The British Journal of Pharmacology--which is published by
NPG--already offers free access to articles and commentaries upon
publication and access to papers after a 12 month embargo.  Other
NPG-published titles that open their archives on a 12-month rolling
basis are:  Cell Death and Differentiation, the EMBO titles, Heredity,
Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Laboratory Investigation, Modern
Pathology, and Neuropsychopharmacology.  See
http://medinfo.netbib.de/wp-content/uploads/nature-oa.pdf for more
details.)

Bill

William Walsh
Head, Acquisitions Department
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur Street, SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: 404.651.2149
Fax: 404.651.2148
Email:  wwalsh@gsu.edu

>>> Rick Anderson <rickand@UNR.EDU> 8/23/2006 11:02 AM >>>
Nature recently announced
(http://www.nature.com/press_releases/NPG_opens_archives.pdf) a sort
of
modified open access to its archival content.  However, there's a
catch:
they're now asking us to sign a new version of the license agreement
for
our 2007 renewals, in order (as my new sales rep put it) "to guarantee
that you have access if you need to cancel."

Most of the new license language is okay, but they now apparently want
confidentiality for pricing and license terms.  If we agree, that
could
spell the end of public discussion of Nature's pricing practices.  It
seems to me that we'd better all decide that we're not going to agree.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu