Open access is an area of great debate among publishers and readers of scientific journals. Acta Dermato-Venereologica is from 2011 totally freely accessible for everyone with Internet. Open access is in line with the worldwide trend of attempting to provide greater access to the results of scientific research, as shown by the Berlin Declaration in 2003, and perhaps best expressed in the new rules for National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Wellcome Trust grant holders. For instance, the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest research charity, now demands that the final manuscripts of all authors’ research papers are deposited in PubMed Central, the free-to-access life sciences repository developed by the National Library of Medicine. Papers deposited in this repository must be made freely accessible no later than 6 months after publication. Furthermore, many universities have proposed that recipients of their research grants should place a copy of the published journal articles in an e-print repository on university or subject-based websites. This is in line with the intentions of Acta Dermato-Venereologica and, in this way, the research papers will be exposed to greater potential audiences; anyone with internet access will be able to read them without restriction. By adhering to these regulations, we believe that we will also further increase the impact of the research published in our journal.

All articles published in Acta Dermato-Venereologica will also be accessible via BioMedSearch.com

We also encourage authors to retain copyright of their work and instead sign a contract for license to publish with the journal.

As soon as a paper is published in Acta Dermato-Venereologica the corresponding author receives the final pdf for placement in the University repository.

The benefits of open access!

Open access will offer your research the potential to reach every scientist and medic in the world with an Internet connection! It will also provide you yourself with instant access to the entire Acta D-V archive. There is a general drive towards open access in the world of science and medicine and we are proud to be the first of the top 10 ranked dermatology journals (based on 2009 impact factor) to take this positive step.

Furthermore, all authors will benefit from open access resulting in more number of citations to their papers. This is of major advantage when searching for funding.

The cost

The transition to open access has to be funded somehow. Therefore, from October 2010 we will introduce a non-refundable submission fee of € 40*. Also, page charges for accepted papers will increase from January 2011. We feel, however, that these additional costs are a relatively small price to pay for the enormous benefits of open access.
*Note: our acceptance rate is presently approximately 50%.