Revenues from library subscriptions to Florida Entomologist have changed little from 1994. Library subscriptions declined this year, but revenues from them went up (Fig. 1). In constant dollars, FES income from library subscriptions has declined 5% from 1994 through 1999.

Perhaps FES can continue its present service of free, immediate posting of Florida Entomologist articles on FCLA's server but supplement its publishing revenues and prepare for coming changes by offering its authors a new for-fee service. This service would be immediate posting of their articles on PubMed Central.

PubMed Central is NIH's means of speeding the transfer of biological research to a Web repository with barrier-free access. It should be a major step toward a near-perfect system of disseminating research results, described by Stevan Harnad as, "…all papers in all fields, systematically interconnected, effortlessly accessible and rationally navigable, from any researcher's desk, worldwide for free."

An advantage of PubMed Central posting over FCLA posting is that PubMed Central will soon be a major starting place for searches of Web-accessible biological literature. It will therefore make articles maximally accessible and of maximum use to the research community.

In addition to charging for immediate posting to PubMed Central, FES should provide its authors these two new services for free:

(1) Certify all submitted manuscripts for posting on PubMed Central. This will give authors who wish to make preprints of their articles Web accessible the means of doing so.

(2) Post all Florida Entomologist articles on PubMed Central two years after they are published. In January 2000 that would be articles published from 1917 through December 1997. As noted above, this will make the articles maximally accessible and useful.
 

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