Nearly 20% of my publications are in the journal Genetics. It’s long been my favorite journal. It’s a peer-edited, society journal covering the full range of genetics, including statistical and computational methods. Authors are encouraged to include the full details (for example, of methods).
When I started reading Genetics, it was only available in print. It’s now solely online, and they scanned and posted all of the articles going back to the first issue from January, 1916. (The first paper was “Non-disjunction as proof of the chromosome theory of heredity,” by Calvin Bridges.)
All of those old papers, in fact all papers at Genetics more than a year old, have long been openly available on their website. So you didn’t need access to a subscription to read and download Haldane and Waddington’s 1931 paper on “Inbreeding and linkage” (a particular favorite of mine), or Lander and Botstein’s 1989 paper on interval mapping.
But, alas, the policy changed at the beginning of 2025, and papers older than 15 years are available only with a subscription. Just the papers that are 1-15 years old are openly available. So 18 of the 32 papers I’ve published in Genetics are no available to most people.
It has something to do with a change at Counter Metrics, which is used to track usage of journal subscriptions.
I’m sad.
Since Genetics moved to Oxford University Press, the cost of publishing in the journal has become outlandish. For GSA members, it costs $3895 to publish open access. Even publishing in G3 now costs $2330 for GSA members.
This sucks. Let’s make it all Diamond Open Access.