This directory of OA journals is hosted by Lund University Libraries in Sweden. From their homepage: http://www.doaj.org:
“DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.” One can search by keywords or browse through broader and narrower subject headings.
These stats are from their website, accessed Sept. 28, 2015:
Seen in “Outstanding Websites of 2014”, Choice, Sept. 2015, p. 33
“American Society for Microbiology announces 2016 launch of new OA journal – mSphere – 10 Jun 2015
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has announced plans to launch mSphereTM, a new pan-microbiology open-access journal, in early 2016. mSphere will create new opportunities for researchers in microbial sciences to share findings that are transforming our understanding of human health and disease, ecosystems, neuroscience, agriculture, energy production, climate change, evolution, biogeochemical cycling, and food and drug production.
mSphere will build on the success of mBio®, ASM’s first open access journal. Its scope will reflect the immense range of fields within the microbial sciences. An emphasis will be placed on bringing together these diverse fields to feature their common threads through the data, methods, and conceptual frameworks of original peer-reviewed research.
Dr. Michael Imperiale, Founding Editor in Chief of mSphere is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School and a member of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Author of more than 135 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Imperiale has served as an editor of ASM’s Journal of Virology® and mBio® and associate editor of Virology and PLoS Pathogens.
ASM journals have long been recognized as important venues for dissemination of significant, high-quality microbiological research. The launch of mSphere will complement the excellence of ASM’s 10 specialised primary research journals. mSphere™ will welcome submissions from authors around the world and will provide rapid decisions on publication, while carrying on ASM’s tradition for rigorous peer review. Like the rest of the ASM journals program, the new journals will be hosted on the HighWire platform at journals.asm.org.
A formal ‘Call for Papers’ will be issued in September 2015, and the journal launch is planned for early 2016.”
Source: Knowledgespeak News, June 10, 2015
From the “Cornell Chronicle”, Jan. 15, 2015, and seen in the “Fast Facts” column of “College & Research Libraries News”, Vol. 76(2) p. 108, Feb., 2015,
“As an open-access service, it allows scientists from disciplines encompassing physics, statistics, computer science and others to share research before it’s formally published. One million papers have now been uploaded to the repository.”
“arXiv received more than 97,000 new submissions in 2014. More than 150 subject experts from around the world evaluate and categorize every article posted on arXiv.”
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/01/research-repository-arxiv-hits-1-million-submissions
http://ve.oxfordjournals.org/
“Virus Evolution is a new Open Access journal focusing on the long-term evolution of viruses, viruses as a model system for studying evolutionary processes, viral molecular epidemiology and environmental virology.
The aim of the journal is to provide a forum for original research papers, reviews, commentaries and a venue for in-depth discussion on the topics relevant to virus evolution.”
“Editors-in Chief, Professor Oliver Pybus, University of Oxford, and Professor Santiago Elena, Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas (CSIC-UPV) welcome submissions at:https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/vevolu.”
Source of information: Knowledgespeak Newsletter, Feb. 9, 2015
eLIFE
NTIS is launching greater access to federally funded science & technology information and reports. Starting in October 2014, U.S. citizens will have free access to all electronically-available documents in the NTIS collection.
Currently there are more than 850,000 documents digitized for free public access. For the first time, Individuals will have the option to subscribe to the NTRL in order to benefit from the Premium features of the database, such as Digitization-on-Demand (NTRL Premium Individual). Premium Institutional subscribers (including corporations) will continue to have access to the more than 2.8 million records with a variety of enhanced features as listed in the chart below.
More at: http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/NTRNews7-3.pdf
Princeton University Library has a subscription to NTRL reports,
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PubMed Central renamed PMC, adopts new web page design – 06 Aug 2012
PubMed Central, the repository of the US’ National Institutes of Health, has shortened its name to PMC in a bid to avoid being confused with PubMed. It has also gone for a new look and feel, and has been updated to conform to NCBI’s new standards for page design. The redesign is seen to allow for a cleaner and more uniform presentation across PMC’s site as well as its article, issue and journal archive pages.
For instance, the journal logo is on the page centre, with additional white space. The navigation links are designed to be more compact while the font colours are more uniform across the site. The article pages have also been enhanced by a more compact presentation for article front matter, featuring links to author information, article notes and copyright and licence information.
The views for tables and figures have been enhanced. Other improvements to the new article page include easier readability and navigation, including links to the various article formats, and to the corresponding article citation in PubMed as well as to those PubMed citations that are related to the article.
There is also an enhanced look for bibliographic citations that are referenced in the article. Finally, at the top of each section of an article, the “Go to” navigation links offer a drop down menu that takes the reader to any section more quickly and easily, whether it’s the Abstract, Introduction, Discussion, or any others within the article page.
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Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter, Aug. 6, 2012
Versita Launches Open Access Journal Program
From ResourceShelf Newsletter No. 558, May 31, 2012
From the press release:
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.
ASU (Arizona State University) Libraries have posted a concise piece about Open Access to scholarly research in ” The Library Channel” newsletter: http://lib.asu.edu/librarychannel/2012/05/21/petition/
There is a video and a link to more information as well as the petition at http://www.whitehouse.gov
Freely share the data and the knowledge!
Global Open Access Portal launched at UNESCO meet – 07 Nov 2011
“The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) was launched at a special side event organised during the 36th session of the UNESCO General Conference at Paris headquarters. The portal is aimed at presenting a snapshot of the status of open access (OA) to scientific information around the world.
For countries that have been more successful in implementing OA, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of OA development, it identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.
The portal has country reports from over 148 countries with weblinks to over 2,000 initiatives/projects in member states. It is supported by an existing Community of Practice (CoP) on Open Access on the WSIS Knowledge Communities Platform that has over 1,400 members.
The GOAP, launched together with the revamped Open Training Platform (OTP) and the first UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform, provides the information for policy-makers to learn about the global OA environment. They can also view their country’s status, and understand where and why OA has been most successful.
Development of the portal has been made possible with support received from the governments of Columbia, Denmark, Norway and the US. The portal will be a work in progress, and shall be further improved with the support received from the community of OA practitioners.
OA is reportedly at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate to provide universal access to information and knowledge. The UNESCO Open Access programme shall continue to facilitate policy dialogue in member states, share knowledge and best practices in the field of OA, and build and share local capacities through North-South and South-South co-operation to build knowledge societies for sustainable development.”
Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter (today)