Highwire milestone

Highwire Press now hosts more than 3/4 million free online peer-reviewed research articles. Excerpt from the press release: 'Today, more than 780,000 free peer-reviewed, full-text articles are available at www.highwire.org. This open archive covers a wide range of not-for-profit titles. Over 90% of the articles in the government repository are already available for free in their complete context (the entire online journal, not just individual articles), with advanced full-text searching and toll-free reference linking, through HighWire. "There has been a great deal of misinformation and misunderstanding about the chimera of 'free' access, mainly due to a failure to differentiate between responsible and rapacious publishers," stated Michael A. Keller, Stanford University librarian and publisher of HighWire Press. "Not-for-profit and society publishers, among them those associated with HighWire, offer break-even pricing models that equitably advance both the publishing and the research processes. The combination of these publishers' fair pricing policies and their voluntary opening of access to over three quarters of a million articles, clearly demonstrates their earnest desire to fully support the scientific and scholarly communication process." Through the HighWire free back issues program, participating journals make all their research content free after a brief delay. Currently, 50 journals on HighWire offer content free within six months or less from the day of publication, another 161 titles after a wait of twelve months or more, and all offer immediate access for members, subscribers or those on an authorized institutional network.'