Via Haldane’s Sieve, Genetics has a new preprint policy:
POLICY ON PRE-PRINT DEPOSITS
GENETICS allows authors to deposit manuscripts (currently under review or those for intended submission to GENETICS) in non-commercial, pre-print servers such as ArXiv. Upon final publication in GENETICS, authors should insert a journal reference (including DOI), and link to the published article on the GENETICS website, and include the acknowledgment: “The published article is available at www.genetics.org.” See http://arxiv.org/help/jref for details.
Here’s a more thorough list of preprint guidelines by journal. For all practical purposes this means that population genetics can now percolate more freely among the masses. Many of the differences between “draft” preprints and the final manuscript have to do with formatting, etc., from what I have seen. So the content shall flow!
Why does this matter when so many people have academic access? First, you’d be surprised at the blind-spots that some major universities exhibit in regards to their journal subscriptions (often it is a function of various squabbles and attempts to renegotiate rates). Second, there are people outside of the formal academy who are interested in assorted diverse topics (this is evident in the readership of this weblog). There’s no need to gate this …