Commentary on Open Access from the JAL Editors - ScienceDirect

"On January 31st, 2012 a message was distributed throughout the library where we work, announcing and congratulating us on being named the Co-Editors of the Journal of Academic Librarianship. It was a proud moment, but the glow was short-lived: within minutes, a colleague forwarded an email to the library regarding the boycott of Elsevier. This was a resounding introduction to the politics of editing and the controversy surrounding Open Access (OA).

It also prompted us to wonder how we would be able, in our new editorial role, bring additional attention and discussion to the OA debate and perhaps a more balanced perspective. While we initially intended to write an editorial, it soon became clear that the issue was much more complex, with many more perspectives than those largely represented in the literature. We decided that a complete topical issue focusing on the OA debate would allow for the diversity of opinion and experience that the topic deserves. As a result, we began inviting researchers from around the world to write about their research and views on OA. Those invited were not only librarians, but publishers, lobbyists and academic professionals in a variety of disciplines. While most of the contributors support the concept of OA, there is divergence in terms of how OA is defined, what it should look like, and the ideal model to implement and sustain it. The goal of this issue is to bring a balance to the argument, to draw attention to some of the issues we need to face, the questions we need to answer and the commitments we need to stand by before we can move forward....

Having said that, there are three things that we didn't know about Elsevier and its commitment to OA:

1.

Each January issue of every Elsevier journal is freely available to everyone for that volume year.

2.

Having published in Elsevier journals we were aware that Elsevier did support the “Green” model of OA, but what we didn't know was that it also supported the “Gold” model as well.

3.

Elsevier has released a number of gold OA journals ..."