Developing Open Access Journals: A Practical Guide

Citation

MacDonald, R. (2008), "Developing Open Access Journals: A Practical Guide", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 931-932. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810921745

The number of open access journals (OAJs), and the number of people considering producing them, is growing rapidly and will probably continue to do so. David Solomon, founder and editor of the OAJ Medical Education Online, has produced a very readable guide for just these people. Solomon's 12 years of experience and obvious enthusiasm for open access publishing shine through in this excellent introduction to establishing an OAJ.

The book begins with a brief discussion of the history and role of scholarly journals, and the rise of the commercially published journal; it then moves into a discussion of the arguments for open access publishing and the various open‐access publishing models. This sets up Chapter 2, which gives potted histories of five successful OAJs, describing the features that budding publishers should bear in mind:

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  scope – what the journal is about;

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  financial arrangements – how to cover the inevitable costs involved in producing a high‐quality journal;

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  the peer review process;

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  rights management and editorial policies;

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  editorial board/governance and structures;

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  indexing/archiving practices; and

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  structure, content, and formatting.

The second part of the book considers these aspects in greater detail from the point of view of planning an OAJ. Solomon provides many useful suggestions, such as how to convince prominent academics to contribute quality papers to an as yet unheard of publication. His advice is seldom prescriptive or detailed: instead he describes problematic issues, such as the electronic hosting and archiving of a journal, then suggests possible avenues for dealing with them without saying “this is best” or dwelling on technical details that can be found elsewhere. Drawing on the OAJs described in Chapter 2, he emphasizes that there is often no right or wrong way to approach a particular problem.

Part three of the book concentrates on the actual launching and maintenance of the journal. Solomon discusses how to advertise a new academic journal, and the crucial importance of consistency in URLs or online file structures. There is some excellent advice on disseminating journal content, such as where to get advice on improving your search engine standing, or analyzing the search terms that produce hits on the journal website; the role of indexing services is stressed, as is word of mouth, although submitting the journal website to relevant libraries for inclusion in their lists online resources was an odd omission. Solomon describes various good practices (making backups; communicating with authors, editors, and others; keeping records of everything) and draws on his own experience to flag issues likely to cause ongoing problems. His rueful description of the unreliability of book reviewers might strike a chord with some.

The book concludes with a useful collection of print and online references. True to its subject matter, an updated annotated collection of resources is also available online at the associated website (see www.developing‐oa‐journals.org/resources.php). Developing Open Access Journals is an excellent, and (at the time of writing) possibly unique contribution to a rapidly changing part of the scholarly landscape. I've no doubt that anyone who addresses all of the issues that Solomon raises will end up with a focused and well‐organised OAJ.