The Royal Society, the world's oldest learned society, will 
launch a trial today of an open access service that will 
offer authors the chance to pay a fee for publication which 
will make their article free on the web immediately. 
Currently Royal Society papers can be accessed free of 
charge 12 months after publication. The new service is 
called EXiS (Excellence in Science) and is being tested to 
see if costs of journal editing and production can be 
sustained with this kind of access. The fees are high and 
are charged per page which may discourage some authors from 
choosing the open access option.