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DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

I like the directory as it will allow access to the type of information that the world needs at no cost at all. Well done!

UK Open Access Implementation Group

YouTube: The case for Open Access - UK Open Access Implementation group. Why is open access important to your organisation? How is open access important to UK economy and society? What is the risk if open access doesn't happen.... What do you hope the Open Access implemation group will achieve?

"In 2013, Jeffrey Beall published an attack on the open-access scholarship movement in tripleC: "The Open-Access Movement Is Not Really About Open Access". This article examines the claims and arguments of that contribution. Beall's article makes broad generalizations about open-access advocates with very little supporting evidence, but his rhetoric provides good examples of what Albert O. Hirschman called the "rhetoric of reaction". Specifically, it provides examples of the perversity thesis, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis in action. While the main argument is both unsound and invalid, it does show a rare example of reactionary rhetoric from a librarian."

"A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education covers a phenomenon all of us have suspected, mainly because we've seen it via our editorial boards and editorial advisors - the proliferation of open access (OA) publishers with new names, unknown pedigrees, big promises, and fulsome editorial boards, which often spam our editors and advisors with offers to join the parade." This article does a good job of outlining the pitfalls of the author pay model of open access journals. With open access journals the whole idea is to make it so that information is accessible to the public, but unfortunately that access comes with a cost. The cost of predatory open access journal undermines the whole democratic and altruistic intent behind open access journals. By taking advantage of recently endowed academics these predatory publishers cause many problems for both the individuals affected as well as the Open publishing industry. I also like how there is a clear definition of what predatory open access publishing is.

Peter Suber is Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). He is widely considered the de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement.

Algunos datos recientes sobre academia y acceso abierto/some recent figures about academy and open access (http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4370) "Today, there are more than 9,000 fully open access, scholarly peer-reviewed journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the DOAJ's net growth is a fairly consistent three-four titles per day. There are over 2,000 open access repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). A cross-search of open access repositories using the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine encompasses over 40 million documents, a number that is growing by the millions every quarter (Morrison, 2005-). The producers of academic journal are the same that consume such journals: "Returning to the topic of academic library budgets as the primary support for scholarly journals, Michael Mabe (2011), CEO of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), recently affirmed that about 80-90 percent of the US$8 billion in revenue that goes to producers of the world's peer-reviewed scholarly journals comes from library subscriptions, as reported by Ware and Mabe [4]. Ware and Mabe's analysis is based in part on research by the Research Information Network (2008), which found that journals publishing revenues are generated primarily from academic library subscriptions (68-75 percent of the total revenue), followed by corporate subscriptions (15-17 percent), advertising (four percent), membership fees and personal subscriptions (three percent), and various author-side payments (three percent)."

Thank you very much for sharing.

This article employs queer theory and challenges the notion of fitting emergent open access practices within current frameworks of academic success. While I was partially surprised by some of the assertions made early on in the article regarding open access journals being perceived as not as valuable as more traditional journal models, I think in part I may just hang out in academic circles that gravitate towards open access (hence... this course). But, I am very compelled by the conclusions made by Gurfinkel. That is, rather than trying to figure out how to systematize open access models to be respected within current academic standards, open access (as informed by queer theory, in this article) challenges us to investigate and question our standards in a more radical way. For example, in open access peer review models or post-publication review, the notion of a "peer" and thus who are considered credible and worthy sources of knowledge--and consequentially, what "knowledge" is-- are put into question. So, more than trying to figure out how to systematize and make more "legitimate" open access models, Gurfinkel wants us to ask what about the academy currently excludes open access models from being meaningful and legitimate practices in the first place.

"Taylor & Francis carried out a worldwide survey, with the aim of exploring journal authors' views on open access. Having previously conducted a survey on open access in 2013, we have been able to see how authors' opinions have developed, and whether the discussion and debate on open access has helped to inform and shape views. With responses to both the 2013 and 2014 survey given side-by-side, you can easily see how attitudes have changed. Alongside this, the 2014 survey explores many new areas and gives a fascinating insight into authors' current perceptions of open access."

Today, on the one hand we have the Internet that allows access to information worldwide and at any time on the other hand librarians are facing tremendous pressure with the exorbitant price rise of the subscriptions to academic journals and unable to meet their responsibility of providing information. Simultaneously. This has called for the development of new models of information provision to meet user demands. Open Access is one of the models under discussion that has implications for educational, research, legal and economic policy. This handbook is designed to contribute to this debate and provides an interested public with information on Open Access, a subject which, despite its great social importance, has hitherto been mainly discussed by experts. The handbook is the outcome of a workshop that brought together 25 experts coming from German Federal Ministries, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Commission, the academic community,major academic organisations, the publishing sector, and the Open Access community This handbook presents the various views of major stakeholders and covers a wide range of issues relevant to open access.

I found this is quite useful for open access! It kinda of introducing open access in depth. Thanks for sharing!

This research study was an eye-opener for me. Until this point, I was completely unaware of these journal practices, although I had received several emails from journals I had never heard of wanting to publish papers based on conference presentations.

Although it is important to put those predatory journals under the spotlight so researchers don't fall in their trap, I always wince when I read one of those articles because too few take the time to talk about the good sides of open access journals and many readers will leave the article thinking that open access publishing is bad and not trustworthy. Of course, as mentioned in the Nature Mag article linked in the Guardian article, PLOS are excellent and have very high levels of evaluation, but they are not alone. And I have yet to find a paper that would make the same exercise with both open access journals and subscription-based journals so we could see how bad it is in the publishing world in general. That said, we must do everything within our power to stop those malpractices by predatory journals. (by the way, I have also received spam to publish in journals that were not even in my field of practice by BioMed Central. They are good, they are trustworthy. I wrote to them to say that it looks like baits to send spam calling me a Dr and inviting me to publish in fields that I know nothing about. They removed me from their mailing list but I don't know if they changed this practice)

A blog, Scholarly Open Access. Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing, http://scholarlyoa.com/, systematically lists fake academic journals and predatory publishers, who are taking advantage of a some open access naiveté.

A personal view of Open Access Science. It's part of a weekly series on Open Access from Open Access Button, so I will be posting them as they become available ... "We caught up with Graham Steel, a tireless advocate for Open Access who believes in sharing information as widely and as easily as possible. A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Graham works as a property claims adjuster/recovery specialist. After losing his sibling to a rare condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), Graham became involved in patient advocacy work, and more recently, in lobbying for open access to published scientific research. He acts in advisory capacities to the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Digital Science".

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

"The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. "

"Larger than the Open Access warz, I feel that I have a moral responsibility to increase the access to science careers for women and minorities. I can't hold the door open for those folks unless I am standing on the other side of it. That means getting tenure and if someone tells me that I can get closer to those goals by forgoing Open Access for a round or two, I'm going to do it."

Open Access Week is less than a month away! Now in its eighth year, Open Access Week is an international event that celebrates the wide-ranging benefits of enabling open access to information and research-as well as the dangerous costs of keeping knowledge locked behind publisher paywalls.

Hi Kim, Thanks for sharing! Until now, I'd never heard of Open Access Week. I'd love to hear how both you and Federico have been involved in the past and what your communities (both online and off, local and nonlocal) have done to highlight open access during this week. I did a bit of searching, and it turns out that my school has a whole series of events planned for OEW, including some super interesting sounding lecture and a few documentary screenings. I'm very excited! http://oaweek.open.ubc.ca/ Amanda

Knowledge should be able to share with people, knowledge should not be trapped behind a paywall. For those who needs the information but couldn't get the information because they need to pay for it, this doesn't make any sense to me. So many paper and research by scientists are funding by government which the tax payers have contributed a lot on funding. Thus people should have access to those information.

It's unquestionable that Research4Life has had a significant impact in improving access to research information for communities in developing countries. I do have a number of criticisms about how the program is organized and delivered, however. 1. Publisher participation in the program is 'entirely voluntary', without 'a single contract (being) signed between any of the partners' (Aaronson, 2004), meaning that publishers can opt out at any point. This issue was highlighted in 2011 when Elsevier, Lipincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science Magazine) withdrew access to over 2500 journals through the HINARI system. Following international attention, and widespread condemnation, publishers restored access, with Elsevier announcing that they were in discussions with the government in Bangladesh to transition towards a paid licensing scheme (Wise, 2011). 2. Countries that meet the eligibility criteria of the program (which are based on the World Bank's listing of Lower and Lower Middle Income Countries) are sometimes excluded. Take for example India or Pakistan- although these countries are in the lists of eligible countries, the publishers deliberately exclude participation to protect whatever business they may have in these countries. So although hundreds of institutions could benefit, they exclude access to protect the business they receive from a handful of institutions. 3. Access to content is delivered through a single username and password for each institution. This is problematic for librarians, as they are unable to ensure the security of the password (a well-meaning researcher may share the password with a colleague in another institution, violating the license agreement). Abuse of institutional accounts has severe consequences, and librarians are sent messages from Research4Life threatening to not only cut off the institution, but all institutions in their country if they

Research4life is a great program by committed government and non-government organizations dedicated to produce valuable researches that will improve the life of people. Librarians play an important role in assisting researchers find valid, current, relevant information in order to produce a reliable output or results that will help humankind's betterment of living.

"Research papers aren't always the easiest pieces of literature to read. Expecting Joe Public to understand all of these articles is simply unrealistic. Whilst they have access to the papers when they're open access, that doesn't mean they're always going to be able make good use of them. That's where social media has its time to shine. More and more scientists are moving to social media in order to promote their research and engage the public, as well as each other. Social media in itself offers the chance to reach out and make science exciting."

' ... licensing really does go to the heart of what open access means ...'

Open source and Open Access They are quite similar terms and with a common philosophy, give freedom to the user to use the share as he wills material. Interestingly both the open source and open access are four levels: Levels of open source 1 Level 0: Freedom to use the code 2 Level 1: Freedom of study code 3 Level 2: Freedom to study it and / or modify 4 Level 3: Freedom to redistribute (with or without changes) Levels of free access 1 Reuse all or part of the material for their own purposes 2 Sharing work with other 3 Power revise, adapt, change, and / or translate the shared work 4 Mix two or more existing sources and combine them to create something new As you can see they are very similar and can cause confusion, and believe they are the same. The authors are open access, public and / or private who wish to retain their copyright while the free code can be found that there is so much trouble (at least I think). ---------------- Código abierto y Acceso abierto Son términos bastante similares y con una filosofía común, dar libertad al usuario de usar el material compartido como a él le parezca. Curiosamente tanto el código abierto y el libre acceso tienen cuatro niveles: Niveles del código abierto 1. Nivel 0: Libertad de usar el código 2. Nivel 1: Libertad de estudiar el código 3. Nivel 2: Libertad de estudiarlo y/o modificarlo 4. Nivel 3: Libertad para redistribuirlo (con o sin cambios) Niveles del acceso abierto 1. Reusar una parte o toda del material para sus propios fines 2. Compartir el trabajo con otros 3. Poder revisar, adaptar, cambiar, y/o traducir el trabajo compartido 4. Mezclar dos o más fuentes existentes y combinarlos para crear algo nuevo Como se puede apreciar son muy similares y pueden causar confusión, y creer que son lo mismo. En el libre acceso existen autores, instituciones públicas y/o privadas que desean conservar sus derechos de aut

This list is a helpful tool for authors who are publishing their work in Open Access Journals. It is also helpful for librarians who are acting as advisors for Open Access publishing. Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers. This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. It is recommended recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.

The long list of predatory publishers and journals by Beall is quite daunting. Is this another indication of how cynical a person has to be in every aspect of life - even scholary pursuit? Thankfully there's a record to alert stakeholders of potentially unscrupulous publishers and unvalidated journals.

As I was working on my final project I found myself only able to name 1 OA Journal: PLOS. I wanted to know if there were any other big players in the game, much like the top commercial journals. As a result, google came up with the above site, which works like an index or directory for OA Journals. It's good to see in light of the difficulties that closed access journals have been causing in countries that are digitally divided from affluent ones. Hopefully with the growth of open access titles we will see the digital divide and information gap close. Happy browsing! And please post any other open access titles you have come across! Lets popularize them in our network! One more: http://doaj.org/

It's absolutely shameful that so few library and information science journals are open access: if any professional associations have a professional imperative towards improving the scholarly and cultural communication processes, it is librarians and other information professionals. This substantial (but still woefully short) list of open access journals that publish on library and information science will be a great resource for those of us in this course who are aspiring or practicing librarians. As we've heard over and over again throughout this course, advocacy is absolutely essential if open access principles are ever to receive wider acceptance and implementation; that's why it's important that, as practicing information professionals, we use open access publications for our research whenever we can. Lists like this one allow us to streamline our research in ways that align most closely with our professional values, though of course currently there just isn't enough published to allow us to rely exclusively on open access material for our own work. But having lists like this also allows us to determine where our research should be submitted; otherwise, by publishing in paid journals, we are only making things worse. This all being said, most lists like this that I could find online were either outdated and incomplete, part of a larger database that made hyperlinking difficult, or-like this one-they lacked any explanation of what sorts of articles could be found within; even this one hasn't been updated in eighteen months. But as is so often the case with open access, we must take what we can get.

Hi, thank you for sharing the link! I agree with your comments. However, I am very pleased that I found my professional journal on the list :)