Talking in the Library

Open Access Week 2011: Open Access Journals #oaweek

Commercial and society publishers continue to dominate the academic publishing landscape but in the last twelve months, the number of open access journals listed in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has risen from 4300 to over 7000 journals.

What is so special about open access journals? To qualify for listing in the DOAJ, a journal must use a funding model that does not charge readers or institutions for access. Most are peer-reviewed or use editorial processes for quality control. Open access means increased visibility because the journals are available freely online. Subject coverage is extensive, which means there are a number of high-quality, scholarly journals of interest to the K-State community. Notable open access journals with high impact factors include PLoS Biology and Genome Biology.

K-State Libraries became an open access publisher in late 2007, founding New Prairie Press to support journal editors both at Kansas State and beyond. We have grown from two to six journals currently in production and two others preparing their first issues. We are also working with academic faculty to bring two new undergraduate research publications to our open access platform.

If you are involved with editing or publishing a journal at K-State and want to know more about moving your content to an open access platform like New Prairie Press, contact Char Simser at info@newprairiepress.org.

-Char Simser

This is our last open access post for the week.  Hope you enjoyed the series.

Bold move by the Max Planck Society

As has been widely announced elsewhere, the Max Planck Society, one of the largest research societies (23,000+ employees in 78 institutes) in Europe, opted to cancel its contract for scientific journals with Springer, the world's second-largest publisher of scientific journals. Many institutions rattle their sabers with the major STM publishers, but few ever take such radical measures to express their dissatisfaction with what many view as excessive pricing.

It's worth noting that K-State Libraries has a contract with Springer, offering access to ~1200 Springer journals. One wonders what would happen were we and many others to follow the MPS's lead. It also bears mentioning that this is a publicly-funded German institution withholding money from a largely German-owned firm.

Esposito on open access

In a recent article in The Scientist, Joseph Esposito takes some interesting views on the current state of open access before proposing his own alternatives. While I don't agree with many of his points, not least his near blanket dismissal of open access as a naive enterprise and his very inflated numbers for what it costs to build and maintain a repository--with that kind of money, anyone could hopefully do many more things than just that one--he does raise some interesting ideas about the current state of affairs. At the very least, it was useful to see that the very first comment asked Mr. Esposito to reveal his affiliations and backgrounds. That's a wise thing to do with anyone who speaks of open access and publishing.