For several years, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has offered authors of research funded by academic institutions, not-for-profit organizations, philanthropic foundations, and government agencies an open access publishing option in its journals. Based on the increasing frequency of requests from authors of research funded by these entities to publish open access, ASCO is expanding the scope of eligible funders to include life science companies. ASCO will now permit authors of company-funded research to publish open access in any of its journals under a CC BY-NC-ND reuse license.
ASCO offers authors a range of open access options. The following open access policies apply to articles for which research was funded by academic institutions, not-for-profit organizations, philanthropic foundations, government agencies, and for-profit companies (each a “Funder”):
- Green Open Access: For authors whose Funder requires free access sooner than 12 months after online publication, ASCO permits authors to self-archive the article by uploading the final published version to their Funder’s repository 6 months after online publication with a link to the final published version of the article on the journal’s website.
- Gold Open Access: For authors whose Funder requires immediate open access, authors may pay an article processing charge (“APC”) to defray the costs associated with publication in exchange for immediate open access publication according to one of the Creative Commons (CC) license options listed below, provided that authors and Funders associated with for-profit companies may only choose a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Visit each journal’s Information for Contributors page for APC details.
- Creative Commons (CC) license options: For Gold Open Access articles, authors (other than those associated with a for-profit Funder) may choose one of two CC licenses:
- CC BY 4.0 [link to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/]. (Permitting free access, redistribution, commercial use and derivative works with proper attribution)
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 [link to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode] (Permitting free access and redistribution and non-commercial use with proper attribution. No derivative works or commercial uses permitted.)
Changes to ASCO open access publishing option indicated in green text above.
ISMPP’s 14th Annual Meeting session, “Increasing Speed, Efficiency and Transparency in Medical Publishing through Open Access,” was a prelude to ASCO’s decision to expand eligible funders for open access options to include life science companies. David Sampson, Vice President and Publisher, Publishing, at ASCO, fielded an audience member question during the session regarding journal policies that do not permit company-funded research to be published via open access options. ISMPP is pleased to share ASCO’s decision to expand the scope of eligible funders for its open access publishing options to include for-profit companies.
All ASCO journal websites have been updated with ASCO’s new Access and Sharing policy. The links to this information on each journal website are listed below:
Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO): http://ascopubs.org/jco/site/misc/open-access.xhtml
Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP): http://ascopubs.org/jop/site/ifc/open-access.xhtml
Journal of Global Oncology (JGO): http://ascopubs.org/jgo/site/misc/open-access.html
JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics (JCO CCI): http://ascopubs.org/cci/author-center/open-access.html
JCO Precision Oncology (JCO PO): http://ascopubs.org/po/author-center/open-access