Abstract
Free and open access to peer-reviewed scientific research has been a topic of much lively discussion in recent years. JALA's participation in the Research4Life initiative has made free or low-cost access to its scientific content available in developing countries since 2003 via the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE).
Earlier this year, the ALA Board of Directors accepted a proposal from the JALA Editorial Board to make JALA's peer-reviewed scientific content available to everyone via JALA Online (www.labautomation.org) two years after its initial publication. JALA's nonscientific content was and continues to be freely available online immediately upon publication, and JALA abstracts will continue to be indexed and published by Analytical Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts (CAS+), CINAHL, Compendex, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Google Scholar, Inspec, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, SciFinder, Scirus, and Scopus.
When this proposal for delayed open access was adopted, ALA President Erik Rubin noted, “This policy change is in direct line with ALA's mission and goals. JALA is a very high-value educational product. ALA's commitment to educating and informing the scientific community makes open access an imperative. The two-year delay creates an exclusive benefit for ALA's current stakeholders whose membership dues make educational products like JALA possible.”
And the good news gets better—this new policy not only serves the scientific community as a whole while protecting ALA member benefits, it opens new doors that we believe will help boost JALA's growth and success as the premier showcase for some of the most significant scientific and technological advances of our time. Increasing access to JA-LA's original reports, innovation briefs, technology reviews, tutorials, and feature articles should greatly enhance JALA's online presence, enabling JALA to reach and influence more scientific thought leaders than ever before, and increasing citations for JALA authors. There's never been a better time to publish your work in JALA.
Sincerely,
