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Re: Misperceptions clarified

Do any of the leading publishers committed to Open Access use this software and hosting capacity? I am sure that they do not want to spend money unneccesarily even if there are those who would believe (for reasons that I cannot understand) that for some reason commercial publishers want to spend money.

In particular what is the view from BioOne?

As I have said, I have not myself in this area but would appreciate finding out more. The posting from Dr. Fisher and the previous posting from Heather Morrison makes big claims. I find on the site of Scholarly Exchange the names of eleven journals which use the system. I have checked out about half of them. They are very small and mostly (as far as I can tell) just starting. Of course one has to start somewhere. They do not provide evidence in themselves for the usefulness of the services they are using.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julian Fisher, MD" <fisher@scholarlyexchange.org>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:49 AM
Subject: Misperceptions clarified

The lack of familiarity that many academics have with open source journal publishing software is unfortunate, as it now often exceeds the capabilities of commercial offerings - and at a unbeatable price. It does, like any software, require some support. Even those costs can be kept to a bare minimum.

Anthony Watkinson raised the question in a response to Heather Morrison about whether Scholarly Exchange supported large journals. Many of our journals are recently started but rapidly becoming both active and recognized. The software on which they run, the Public Knowledge Project's Open Journal Systems, has received a sufficient workout, with by PKP's estimate over 800 journals using it, and is capable of handling the editorial loads that journals of all but the top few percent have to manage.

Our efforts, directed (but not exclusively) to smaller journals and smaller societies, with their limited resources, have focused on assistance with startup (a free year's hosting and management), guidance in the startup process, and development of resources to continue publishing thereafter (at minimal cost). Beyond that, we vigorously encourage our journals to arrange long-term archiving arrangements with university or governmental bodies, a task made easier by the OAI-compliant and LOCKSS-compliant nature of OJS.

It is no longer an embarrassment to work with systems that cost a hundredth of what older systems cost. Many consider it a definite advantage, especially if free and open access is the goal.

Julian H. Fisher, MD

Managing Director
Scholarly Exchange, Inc., a 501 (c) 3 public charity