Open Access to Cave & Karst Science Online

[David Gibson]

Research Councils UK (RCUK) is a partnership of the UK's seven Research Councils that invest a total of around £3 billion, annually, in publicly-funded research. There is a Government commitment to ensure that such research is freely accessible. This has an effect on BCRA because, where the author of a paper published in Cave & Karst Science has received public funding of the research, we need to commit to making that paper freely available. At the moment, we charge a fee to non-BCRA members who wish to access Cave & Karst Science Online, although we do make specific papers freely available where this is required. (See for example, the paper in volume 40(1) by Gareth Farr and Simon Bottrell at http://bcra.org.uk/cks?j=118 ).

However, we have decided that, in order to support the Open Access initiative, and to encourage authors to contribute to C&KS, we shall be implementing free monthly access to C&KS Online for everyone. This is likely to happen 'in the near future. There will still be a charge for annual access by non-members of BCRA. We have also decided that, in common with many academic publishers, we will request that authors from academic institutions pay a fee (or, if you like, make a donation) to BCRA in order to have their paper published. We will, of course, continue to accept papers from amateur and non-affiliated authors without any charge.

Other changes in the way we publish Cave & Karst Science are that we have decided to increase the number of colour pages in the paper edition, and Council has agreed to pay one of the editors, David Lowe, a small 'honorarium' in recognition of the large amount of time that is involved in editing the publication. Funding for these changes will come from BCRA's reserves and we hope to be able to hold the subscription rate (and BCRA's membership fee) unaltered for 2014.