BurkeyAcademy Knows it All: The Death of the Berkeley Electronic Press Journals

Use the link to access the list of former Berkeley Electronic Press journals discussed in the following blog post:  “Maybe I'm the last one to figure it out, but the Berkeley Electronic Press journals have shut down and been sold for a year! I found it pretty hard to find information about this topic, so here is what I was able to find out...  Background: Back in 1999 a bunch of professors got together and founded the "Berkeley Electronic Press". they had some really great ideas to try to combat some of the problems in the publishing industry.  The three most important ones that most economists bought into were:  1) a guaranteed fast decision on submitted articles, or your money back  2) much cheaper rates for University subscriptions  3) papers were published on a rolling basis, so as soon as a paper was accepted and formatted (by the author) the paper was put online-- no delay!  This is in a time when publishers were jacking up subscription fees to libraries to astronomical rates, and many journals were taking six months to a year before giving any feedback on submitted papers.  This kind of behavior can be deadly to an academic career, when tenure-track professors only have six years to not only get articles published, but also to demonstrate that they are being read by these papers getting cited...  I am sure that most people who were involved with editing these journals, and most people who submitted papers to these journals did so because they bought into the idea that ‘we can do this better’.  Also, this system made the research more widely available, since more libraries could afford to subscribe to the collection, and individuals could access the content for no monetary cost...  I must be way behind the times, but I just discovered that the Berkeley Electronic Press sold their 60 journals (in September 2011) to a company called De Gruyter.  From all appearances all hell has broken loose since the transfer.  One year later, it it seems like most journals are not really publishing any more ... Also, there are a lot of comments on their site, from people claiming that their submitted article has disappeared into the nether, or submission fees have been lost, or other complaints...  It really is unclear what's going on on their website... If someone from the company wants to reply, I would love to hear what's really going on...  Until something major happens, both of the journals under their new ownership, and the old BEPress guys are dead to me. I am also seriously considering setting down my SelectedWorks page, because I really don't understand what it is at this point if it is not associated with economics journals anymore.  RePEc seems to be a much more useful network of sites.  As an editor of an open access journal, one that does not charge fees to submitters, readers, libraries, or anyone else (see www.srsa.org/rrs), I am very disturbed by this development: Dozens of journals that seemed to be fairly well-run, well respected, and committed to inexpensive access and efficient operation have been thrown into utter chaos.  Below are the names of some of the well-known journals that have been affected...”