Essentials of Glycobiology - New Edition is freely available from the NLM/NCBI Bookshelf

As reported today on Open Access News (OAN):-

... Essentials of Glycobiology, the largest and most authoritative text in its field, will be freely available online beginning October 15, through collaboration between the Consortium of Glycobiology Editors, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Fittingly, the release of the book follows soon after the October 14th celebration of International Open Access Day, which will highlight prior successes in providing such open access to research journals. ...

Here is the book. The Foreword is a great place to start of course.

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OAN Comments:

* Add this to the growing list of widely-used textbooks that are available OA.
* Who's backing this is also noteworthy. It's not an author who negotiated the right to self-archive a copy, or an OA startup publisher; it's a scientific press and the National Library of Medicine.
* The first edition of the book has been OA since 2003. Apparently, the impact on sales of the print copy hasn't been overwhelmingly negative, or it seems unlikely the publisher would support OA to the new edition.

My Comments:

Glycobiology is a most fascinating area that continues to gather interest over time.
I applaud all involved for contributing to and publishing this work to the widest audience on the planet.

Press Release: Novel publishing approach puts textbook in more hands