It’s nice to be part of a success story. The Journal of Applied Polymer Science, the largest scientific publication in polymer science, can boast well over a million articles downloaded per year. However, even the Journal of Applied Polymer Science cannot reach everyone, especially in today’s interdisciplinary research environment. We appreciate that authors might want to make their articles accessible to as vast a readership as possible.
As part of the Wiley OnlineOpen initiative, the Journal of Applied Polymer Science now offers to authors the option of making their articles open access online immediately. Articles that are 
published OnlineOpen will be distinguished by an “unlocked padlock” symbol, and will be free to access also for non-subscribers.
The choice to go OnlineOpen is entirely the author’s, and it can be made at acceptance of the article by filling and submitting the Wiley OnlineOpen form. The process is therefore completely transparent to the editors and referees handling the manuscript, and whether an author chooses OnlineOpen or not has no influence on the peer review process.
Open access articles, such as Analysing metals in bottle-grade poly(ethylene terephthalate) by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry , have appeared in the journal previously, and they have been well received by the community. We have now updated our systems, however, to make it easier for authors to choose this option if they so wish.
In addition, OnlineOpen papers authored by NIH grantees are automatically included in PubMedCentral, aside from being indexed in all the other databases that the Journal of Applied Polymer Science is listed in.
