Academic publisher Versita announced today the launch of a new program of Open Access journals. 100 Emerging Science Journals are being launched in 2012. The program’s focus is on young and rapidly developing fields of science, which have not yet been covered by a designated journal. The emerging topics have been identified in Life Sciences, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Mathematics.
…
One of the main reasons of this outstanding support is the Open Access publishing model, which provides free and unlimited access to the journal articles for all interested readers. In view of Academic Spring – and with Open Access gaining a momentum across scholar communities worldwide — Versita is not planning any publication fees for the first two years.
“Cell Press wins PROSE Award for Article of the Future — 09 Feb 2011
Cell Press, an imprint of STM publisher Elsevier, has announced that ‘Article of the Future’ is the recipient of this year’s PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences, presented by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
In January 2010, Cell Press launched a new format for the online presentation of research articles that breaks free from the restraints of hardcopy — ‘Article of the Future’. This new, more integrated and linked article format, allows each reader to create a personalised path through the article’s content based on his or her own interests and needs.
This year’s winners were determined by a distinguished panel of 16 PROSE judges, out of a record-breaking 491 entries — more than ever before in its 35-year history — from more than 60 professional and scholarly publishers across the country.
Developed in collaboration with authors and readers, ‘Article of the Future’ reflects Elsevier’s and Cell Press’ ongoing commitment to evolve the concept of a scientific publication in conjunction with the development of new technologies and functionalities.”
The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project presented the results of its two-year European Commission (EU) funded examination of open access publishing at an open symposium on January 13, 2011, in Berlin, Germany. Over the two-year study duration, the SOAP project performed a comprehensive study of open access journals, publishers and business models, including analysis of publishing houses, learned societies and licensing along with the overall supply and demand for open access.
The study surveyed over 50,000 researchers for their opinions on open-access journals, which make all their papers freely available online and usually charge authors a fee for each published paper. According to the study, while scientists like open-access papers as readers, as authors, they are still skeptical. The study found overwhelming support for the concept, with 89 percent of respondents stating that open access is beneficial to their field. However, this support did not always translate into action, the study noted. While 53 percent of respondents said they had published at least one open-access article, overall only about 10 percent of papers are published in open access journals.
The study found two main reasons as to why researchers do not submit their work to open-access journals. About 40 percent said that a lack of funding for author fees was a deterrent, while 30 percent cited a lack of high-quality open-access journals in their field.
Requiring authors to make sure the results of their work are freely available has reportedly had only partial success. Robert Kiley, head of digital services at the Wellcome Trust’s Wellcome Library in London, said at the symposium that open-access rates had risen from 12 percent to 50 percent since the funder began requiring its grantees to publish in open-access journals or deposit their papers in a freely available repository. However, Kiley acknowledged that Wellcome Trust had not imposed sanctions on researchers who failed to comply.
The study also makes it clear that open-access journals are proliferating, especially among small publishers. It was observed that one-third of open-access papers were published by the more than 1600 open-access publishers that publish only a single journal. The study also identified 14 ‘large publishers’ that publish either more than 50 journals or more than 1000 articles per year. The group accounts for roughly one-third of open-access publications, the study noted.”
“BMC Biology and Journal of Biology are joining forces as a single journal committed to the publication of high-quality commissioned content and research articles of exceptional
importance. The combined journal will operate under the name BMC Biology, reflecting the strong relationship with the subject-specific BMC–series journals, and will be edited by Miranda Robertson, who explains in an inaugural editorial how she sees the fusion combining the strengths of both journals, with continuation of the re-review opt-out experiment initiated by Journal of Biology.”
If the journal is not (yet) listed in the Online Catalog or the E-Journals listing, go to the Springer website, and you should have access via the Princeton IP addresses.
Authenticated scholars and researchers with online access to full-text content in JSTOR can now locate and connect to articles through WorldCat.org. JSTOR is a preservation archive and research platform for the academic community.
Over 4.5 million JSTOR article-level records from more than 1,000 journals, selected monographs, and other scholarly content are now indexed in WorldCat.org, the Web destination for discovery of materials in libraries worldwide. JSTOR records are delivered in WorldCat.org search results. Scholars and researchers using WorldCat.org can now identify content in JSTOR and connect to the full-text using the authorisation provided by their library.
WorldCat.org is a Web destination with search and social networking features that allow information seekers to discover, localise, and personalise content from local collections and those of more than 10,000 WorldCat libraries worldwide. WorldCat.org indexing of JSTOR metadata helps researchers easily identify resources in the collection alongside other materials relevant to their work. An authorization is required for access to full-text materials in JSTOR.
WorldCat claims to be the world’s largest database of bibliographic information built continuously by libraries around the world since 1971. Each record in the WorldCat database contains a bibliographic description of a single item or work and a list of institutions that hold the item. The institutions share these records, using them to create local catalogs, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work. There are now more than 165 million records in WorldCat spanning five millennia of recorded knowledge. Like the knowledge it describes, WorldCat grows steadily. Every second, OCLC and its member libraries add seven records to WorldCat.”
“A new free service makes it easier to keep up-to-date with scholarly journals.ticTOCs — Journal Tables of Contents Service provides access to the most recent tables of contents of over 11,000 scholarly journals from more than 400 publishers. It helps scholars, researchers, academics and anyone else keep up-to-date with what’s being published in the most recent issues of journals on almost any subject. ”
This is funded and developed by a coalition of academic institutions,organizations, and publishers.
Open Access Directory: A wiki to organize information about the open access movement
Boston, April 30, 2008. Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching.
The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists –for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal “declarations of independence”– and add more over time.
The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access.
To contact us, email Athanasia Pontika, the Assistant Editor (), or the Editorial Board ().
The wiki is represented by an editorial board consisting of prominent figures in the open access movement. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College hosts and provides technical support to the OAD.
