More than 2,000 articles from the journals The Auk and The Condor have been added to the journals' website (aoucospubs.org). Spanning journal issues from 2000 to 2007, the newly available papers are all open access and cover a diverse range of topics related to bird science.
All Auk and Condor issues from before 2000 continue to be available open access on SORA, the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive managed by the University of New Mexico (sora.unm.edu). Libraries may also have access to issues from 2000 to the present through BioOne.
The Auk and The Condor originated as the journals of the American Ornithologists' Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society, respectively. In 2014, the two societies re-launched the journals with new mission statements and a division of content areas and began jointly publishing through the newly formed Central Ornithology Publication Office. Today, The Auk: Ornithological Advances focuses on fundamental research in areas including evolution, systematics, behavior, etc., while The Condor: Ornithological Applications has an applied focus, publishing research relevant to conservation, community and landscape ecology, sociological and economic studies related to birds, and more.
"With our new mission we are publishing more papers that will be useful beyond the typical audience of society members and academic ornithologists," says The Condor: Ornithological Applications Editor-in-Chief Phil Stouffer. "We are happy to be able to increase open access so we can reach that audience more directly." Adds Mark Hauber, Editor-in-Chief of The Auk: Ornithological Advances, "Free access to high quality, peer-reviewed, and meticulously published ornithological science is a service that the publishing societies, both the AOU and the COS, feel most strongly about as part of their service for the birds and the people who study and read about them."
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