e-Science, Scholarly Communication, and Open Access | e-Science Community

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-11-09

Summary:

"A few weeks ago I received an email from one of my Chemistry professors who had recently accepted invitations to join the editorial boards of two open access journals. He had heard from colleagues that these journals had bad reputations and he wanted my advice as to whether or not he should resign from these positions. Wow. As e-science librarians we support the creation, publishing and curation of open access journals. We recognize that information needs to be available electronically and as open as possible to our students, faculty and researchers. But how do we answer questions like the one above? Certainly traditional bibliographic sources such as UlrichsWeb are useful tools in informing us about the basics of an open access journal: who publishes it, is it peer reviewed, where is it indexed, etc.  We also use journal impact factors to provide researchers with journal data. But since open access is different from print journals that have been transformed into electronic format, where can we go to get the information we need to make an informed decision? One source, Scholarly Open Access Publishing, a blog written by Jeffrey Beall, librarian at Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, in Denver, Colorado, provides lists of 'predatory' publishers and questionable open access journals... Recently, the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)<http://www.cni.org/> reported on the SURF Foundation Colloquium on Quality Indicators for Journals a report focusing on issues surrounding open access journals. The Surf Foundation is based in The Netherlands, bringing together Dutch research and applied sciences universities and research institutions to collaborate in areas of higher education and research, including scholarly communication and digital rights. According to the report, the international scientific community needs to be the driving force behind encouraging open access, while at the same time working on developing quality bibliometric indicators, leveraging peer review and creating guidelines for editorial boards for open access journals. The SURF Report refers to an earlier project, SOAP: Study of Open Access Publishing<http://project-soap.eu/report-from-the-soap-symposium/>, which concluded while the majority of researchers felt that open access publishing was essential for future research, there needed to be better quality control over the process and product.  E-science librarians should be able to answer researchers questions or concerns; we should be putting ourselves “at the table of influence”, helping to guide our institutions open access policies and guidelines. We should also be aggregating resources such as the Scholarly Open Access blog that will help our continuing education in open access. By using resources like those above and discussing these issues in open forums, workshops and conferences, we will be the experts researchers turn to for guidance and advice."

Link:

http://esciencecommunity.umassmed.edu/2012/11/05/e-science-scholarly-communication-and-open-access/

From feeds:

[IOI] Open Infrastructure Tracking Project » Items tagged with oa.cni in Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.gold oa.comment oa.netherlands oa.quality oa.librarians oa.chemistry oa.reports oa.jif oa.recommendations oa.bealls_list oa.cni oa.credibility oa.surf oa.soap oa.journals oa.metrics oa.libraries

Date tagged:

11/09/2012, 10:52

Date published:

11/09/2012, 05:52