American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) commits itself to make its highly valued journals readily available to public on open access platforms. The ASCO does so because it believes making scientific research out puts help advance its goal of curing cancer. To make this a reality, the ASCO, will make its publications such as Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP), and Journal of Global Oncology (JGO) widely available to all interested readers and researchers. The ASCO has already revised its open access policy to better serve its mission and accommodate the need of authors.

For the time being ASCO puts embargo on its journals. That means readers are allowed to get full access to those journals/articles once embargo period is lifted. The embargo period, in most of the cases, runs for 12 months from the date of publication. As far as the papers are under the embargo period, access to those papers is limited.

Moreover, in order to accommodate the need and the reality in developing countries, ASCO has a plan in place. According to ASCO’s plan, resource constrained countries can access its journals either free of change or by paying minimal subscription fees. To make this work, ASCO works in collaboration with HINARI- World Health Organization research portal.

All ASCO papers funded by the National Institutes of Health are deposited to PubMed Central once the embargo period is expired.

Source ASCO