SpringerOpen

Op de weblog van BioMed Central zag ik, naast de nieuwe impact factors voor hun tijdschriften, de aankondiging van SpringerOpen . Hieronder een paar stukjes uit de press release.


Springer is expanding its open access offering to all disciplines. SpringerOpen will cover all disciplines within the science, technology and medicine (STM) fields and will be offered in cooperation with BioMed Central. The entire content of SpringerOpen journals – including research articles, reviews, and editorials – are fully and immediately open access, and are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. No subscription is needed.

SpringerOpen journals are e-only journals. Springer is committed to delivering high-quality articles and ensuring rapid publication as with its traditional journals, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process. The final articles are not only published in a timely manner on Springer’s online information platform SpringerLink, but are also distributed to archives such as PubMed Central and to institutional repositories as requested.

SpringerOpen journals are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which facilitates the open distribution of copyrighted work. According to this license, Springer will not reserve any exclusive commercial rights. The journals ask the authors to pay an article-processing charge, in accordance with market standards.

De eerste tijdschriften staan binnenkort open voor submissions en zullen begin 2011 beginnen met publiceren. De tijdschrifttitels zijn:
• Planetary Science
• Global Energy
• Journal of Mathematical Neuroscience
• Health Economics Review
• Journal of Mathematics in Industry
• Journal of Remanufacturing
• Environmental Sciences Europe
• Security and Intelligence Informatics
• Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Express
• Bulletin of Mathematical Sciences
• Gold Bulletin
• Psychology and Well-Being Research

Humanties journals cost much more ...

Van Hans kreeg ik in juli vorig jaar een printje van een artikeltje uit The Chronicle of Higher Education, met de titel Humanities Journals Cost Much More to Publish Than Science Periodicals. Gelukkig een printje, want de volledige digitale tekst was op geen enkele wijze te achterhalen. Dit in tegenstelling tot het rapport dat het onderwerp was. Titel van het rapport: The future of scholarly journals publishing among social science and humanities associations.

Enkele details uit het Chronicle-artikel:

• It costs more than three times as much to publish an article in a humanities or social-science journal as it does to publish one in a science, technical, or medical, or STM, journal.
  
• The author-pays approach works well enough in STM fields, in which grant money is easier to come by – not the case in the chronically underfunded fields covered by the study. Authors in the STM field have ways of financing the publication of their articles that authors in the humanities and social sciences simply do not have.
  
• The findings are pointing us away from author-pays open access toward figuring out what other open access models could work for humanities and social sciences journals.

De Universiteit van Tilburg is een typische humanities en social siences universiteit. Beleid voeren op Open Access is hier wel degelijk anders dan op universiteiten met meerdere STM disciplines. In dit licht vind ik het hoofdstuk Questions requiring fuller answers van het rapport dan ook interessant, met name de vragen:

• How are humanities and social science journals different from STM journals?
  
• Which Open Access model(s) are sustainable for HSS publishers?
  
• Where would the money come from to support ‘gold’ OA in HSS journals?
  
• If HSS articles are posted to an OA repository how long should the embargo period be?