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Re: platforms that work and cost little



I do not see why we cannot be given the names of these journals especially the ones that are very well established. HighWire does. They are not commercial. Allen Press does. Of course the naughty commercial publishers do. Why is there this secrecy about all these 800 journals.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julian Fisher, MD" <fisher@scholarlyexchange.org>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 12:00 AM
Subject: platforms that work and cost little

An open source publishing platform (OJS) in use by over 800 journals (a reasonable estimate by PKP itself - not all journals use the software exactly as it comes "out of the box") implies stability and usability, to respond to Anthony Watkinson's concerns. For these same reasons, Scholarly Exchange chose it as its initial publishing platform and has plans to include other options as they mature. Three of our board of directors have had extensive experience developing applications of this sort, and all three have confidence in several of the newly emerging and fully featured reviewing-and-publishing platforms. Why commercial publishers do not is inexplicable.

While some of the journals that SE supports are start-ups, others have a longer history and are in the process of converting a large quantity of back issues. One new journal received so much attention that a commercial publisher already tried to buy it and lock it behind a financial firewall, a move the editor rejected summarily.

The no-risk approach to starting a journal has appealed to a both universities and learned societies, including Monterey Institute, Harvard University, McGill University, North Carolina State University, Kaduna State University (Nigeria), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad de Murcia, Liverpool John Moores University and the International Society for Disease Surveillance. We applaud their innovative and independent spirit and hope to help others pursue this ultra-low-cost path to Open Access publishing.

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