Developing quality test for new open access journals

[Posted by SURF, “SURF is the Dutch higher education and research partnership for network services and information and communication technology (ICT).] “The number of scholarly and scientific open access journals is currently growing with more than a thousand a year. To ensure that the quality of these journals is guaranteed and at the same time give these new journals a fair chance, an objective quality test – one that can be applied internationally – is being developed for young journals. The quality test will consist of a combination of two indicators, one for the quality of the editorial board and the other for the quality of the peer review process. The former indicator will be developed by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University. A team of young researchers at the University of Amsterdam and Tilburg University will develop the indicator for the peer review process. SURF (the national higher education and research partnership for ICT), Amsterdam University Press, and the CWTS are taking the initiative to develop such an international quality measure. The initiative is supported by the national research funder the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)... Forum of international experts... During the international Open Access week in October 2012, the indicators will be assessed by a forum of international experts, made up of representatives of research funding bodies, the editors-in-chief of academic journals and publishers. The measure will be established on the basis of their opinion and then released. Publishers will then be able to indicate the ‘score’ that their journals have achieved. The research funders can point the researchers to the score and thereby encourage them to publish in open access. It will also assist authors when deciding which journal to publish in.”