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Ray, I don't think Bentham Open, which publishes the online "Stem cell open journal" is a vanity press. There is a growing movement among scientists and information consumers for "open access publishing" Their goal is to make peer-reviewed scientific information freeely available to all as quickly as possible. With traditional publishing, it can take many months for an article to appear in print, and the journals are usually only available by subscription or if you have access to aa medical library. The main difference between open access and vanity publishing, is that legitimate open access journals havae a peer review system and are selective in what they publish. Vanity presses are not selective - they will publish anything as long as the author pays. Their main goal is to make money. In open access, the fees are used to support the journals. Most have provisions to waive the fees if an article is accepted, but the author cannot afford the fee. But often their institutions pay the fees, not the scientists. Their articles are available online to everyone, rather than only those who buy subscriptions. Their main goal is to quickly spread scientific knowledge. All of these open access publishers are not equal. One of the best and the "grandmother" of open access movement is Public Library of Science (PLOS) see their Faq at http://www.plos.org/about/faq.html#pubquest especially questions about charging fees. The documentation fro Bentham Open is in compariosn very sketchy and they are fairly new. It's hard to tell what their peer review process is like. i think its good that Dr. Levesque has published his paper and shared his data on adult stem cellls. My concern is how this articlemay be exploited and misrepresented by anti ESCR groups like the Family Research Council and David Prentice. We will need to keep our eyes wide open! linda www.pdpipeline.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn