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Journal evaluation methodologies are often used to produce journal-ranking lists for various purposes. In this study, the authors present a modularity-based journal evaluation methodology based on the proportional contributions that journals receive from authors affiliated with globally ranked institutions. This empirically developed methodology draws on a stratification of institutions in the global rankings to allocate weights to article batches in a given journal. The authors apply the proposed methodology to evaluating 12,150 scholarly journals in different subject fields. The results show an elitist set of journals with a heavy tendency to publish mostly from authors affiliated with the top-ranked institutions. These journals have the highest weighted author affiliation index (WAAI) scores and are highly distinguished titles in different subject fields. However, the authors find a large population of journals that receive contributions mostly from institutions at lower ranks. They argue that the WAAI methodology provides a generic and objective evaluation technique for ranking journals across all disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different factors influence the altmetric attentions for scholarly articles on social media. This study aimed to evaluate the effecting factors on altmetric coverage of journals in non-English-speaking countries. Using a total population sampling technique, we included all Iranian and Turkish journals published from 2016 to 2019. Altmetric data were collected from altmetric.com using an application programming interface, for the coverage of mentions aggregated by the journal articles on Twitter, Facebook, and news media. The correlations between the languages, field of study, Google PageRank (GPR) score, and availability of a 'share button' with mentions were calculated using non-parametric tests. Among all articles, 2,378 articles were scholarly communicated on social media, and there were 7,191 mentions in the evaluated platforms. The scholarly publication of Iran and Turkey differed greatly concerning the subject matter. However, Twitter ranked first among the highly used alternative metrics for scholarly communication in both countries. The number of mentions for English journals was higher than for bilingual ones. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between the GPR and the coverage of mentions on Twitter and news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is twofold: 1) to analyse common career difficulties experienced by academic journal editors in China and explain their causes; and 2) to identify how stakeholders in Chinese scholarly publishing can support editors. Thirty-two academic journal editors were surveyed, and fourteen of those were subsequently interviewed. We found that a deficit of high-quality manuscripts, a large number of laborious tasks at work, limited opportunities for professional advancement, and low job satisfaction were the main career difficulties, of which the two most common were a deficit of high-quality manuscripts and low job satisfaction. The key causes of these difficulties were an unbalanced academic evaluation system that rewarded indexed over non-indexed journals and the marginal status of journal offices at their affiliated institutions. The forms of support most desired by respondents were recognition for their work, salary increases, greater opportunities for continued learning, easier job title promotion, and more scholarly communication with their peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilingual scholars in the social sciences and humanities at universities in Saudi Arabia face challenges to publishing in international English-language scholarly journals. This study aims to investigate their attitudes and needs and the obstacles they encounter. It also explores how deans of scientific research respond to scholars' obstacles and needs. The study takes a mixed-methods approach, with a questionnaire and interviews with faculty and deans at Saudi universities. The faculty members' interest in conducting research and publishing is lower than their estimation of the importance of these activities. They reported barriers to research and publication, chiefly a lack of funding and a lack of time. They also expressed a need for training in disciplinary writing for publication purposes. Finally, the deans of scientific research described various initiatives at their universities for assisting faculty with research and writing. The study ends with suggestions for what Saudi universities could do to help increase the number of publications by their faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse a relatively recent commercial strategy used by large academic publishers to capitalize on the brand names of their most prestigious scientific journals. Using Pierre Bourdieu's model of capital conversion, we explain how publishers transfer the symbolic capital of an already prestigious journal to derivative journals that share in the prestige of the original brand and transform it into new economic capital. As shown by their high impact factors, these newly created journals benefit from the name recognition and reputation of the originals after which they are named. Plus, through a manuscript routing mechanism, the publishers recycle some of the submissions rejected by their highly selective flagship journal by redirecting those manuscripts, along with their reviews, to derivative journals or to one of the lower-impact journals on their list, which may require an article processing charge for publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly journals, the electronic posting platform arXiv, and the open-access publishing platform F1000Research are three paper publishing systems currently available to researchers. These three systems all have their shortcomings. We introduce another option, a Paper Online Rating Platform (PORP), where all submissions are rated and none rejected. PORP has obvious advantages, we argue, over the other three paper publishing systems. We define PORP, describe its advantages, and discuss some challenges for its future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhanced publication features that extend information access, add variety to presentation formats, and improve reader comprehension have become a part of China's academic journals in science and technology (sci-tech for short) in recent years. We sought to determine the degree of their adoption. By surveying 472 Chinese sci-tech journals, we found that 102 of these journals had enhanced publication features. Thus less than a quarter of Chinese sci-tech journals in our sample had adopted enhanced publication at the time of our survey. Moreover, the enhancing features of the 102 journals were mostly simple ones, which did not depend on authors providing supplemental content. More of these 102 journals are published by scholarly associations than by other types of publishers, and the disciplinary distribution of the journals was imbalanced, with the discipline of medicine and health having the lowest percentage of journals with enhanced features among those disciplines with such journals. This finding is out of step with large international publishers, whose medical journals frequently have features of enhanced publication. These results reveal a gap between the practices of large international publishers and those of China's publishers when it comes to adopting enhanced publishing features for sci-tech journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several major problems with peer review exist in the related humanities disciplines of rhetoric, communication, and composition studies: a preponderance of incompetent reviewers, a lack of constructive criticism and the maintenance of orthodoxy, relative ease in identifying blinded authors, editorial passivity, and long waits to receive reviews. We propose five solutions: training for reviewers and editors, reviewers signing their reviews, payment for reviewers, thirty-day review turnaround, and guidelines for reviewing promoted by collective action. Before such solutions could be implemented, however, the existing problems must be acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For this study, we searched academic journal databases and journal lists from China, Japan, and Korea, dating up to July 2018, to determine the percentage of domestic journals published in English in these three East Asian countries. This study differs from most previous studies that relied on article indexes and abstracts for determining the language of academic journals. We took advantage of the full-text searching capabilities that online journal archives allow. We found that journals labelled 'English-Japanese mixed' or 'Korean and English' typically have only English metadata and not English articles and that the vast majority of domestic journals in China, Japan, and Korea are still published in the national language with no English full text. Due to China's fast development and its low percentage of English journals, the world may experience, for the first time in nearly a century, a decrease in the worldwide percentage of active academic journals published in the English language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When looking for journals to acquire, publishers will find many specialized academic journals that are managed outside university presses. Some are run by individual editorial offices, others by associations, and some under other arrangements. While these journals may not have large circulation numbers, they often have a faithful readership. Understanding the differences between the way a journal was managed in the past and the way a university press can manage it going forward will help the parties involved—publishers and editors—make an orderly transition through acquisition. A press planning to acquire a small, specialized journal should set at least four goals that will enable the journal to gain greater stability and prestige: 1) modifying or even overhauling the existing budget to improve its financial health, 2) amplifying its scholarly reputation, 3) designing it appropriately, and 4) marketing it more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims for a better understanding of the perspectives of contributors to Spanish academic journals regarding open access, open peer review, and altmetrics. Specifically, it explores how age, gender, years of professional experience, and perception and use of social media influence authors' opinions of these developments in scholarly publishing. A sample of 295 contributors to Spanish academic journals participated in a survey about the aforementioned topics. They were found to hold a favourable opinion of open access but were more cautious about open peer review and altmetrics. The responses of younger and female scholars indicated more reluctance to accept open peer review practices. A positive attitude toward social networks did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for emerging trends in scholarly publishing. Despite this, ResearchGate users were more aware of altmetrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) appear to increase for the majority of scientific journals. The current analysis was initiated to better define the dynamics of JIFs. Original data from the Journal Citation Reports, from 1997 to 2016, were analysed. The number of citations referring to publications of the previous two years was correlated with the number of articles and the increase in the number of articles. A model was calculated by smoothing the correlation curves. The mean JIF increased from 1.1 to 2.2 almost continuously. The model suggested that the mean JIF will asymptotically reach a maximum value of 2.6. The number of publications has been growing annually by a factor of 1.048. Correlating the overall number of countable citations with the number of published articles revealed a stable relationship of 6.3 citations referring to the previous two years. Validation of the model with a sample of forty-nine journals that have been published since 1961 showed that their recent JIF dynamics are well reflected in the data, but extrapolation of the current dynamics did not reflect the JIFs of these journals in the past. Average JIF is likely to reach a plateau in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some governments around the world support researchers with financial bonuses for scholarly publications to encourage their productivity. This convergent parallel mixed-methods study investigated whether the ex post funding policy in Turkey, instituted in late 2015, has influenced the quantity and quality of scholarly publications, and whether it has affected the quality of faculty instructional services as measured by student satisfaction. In addition, the study examined whether the financial support provided as a source of motivation has led to any ethical problems. The results indicate that while the ex post funding system has helped increase the number of articles published in journals indexed in national databases, it seems to have resulted in a decrease in those published in international journals indexed by the Web of Science. The results also indicate that the practice of ex post funding seems to have led to an ethical problem in the renaming of Turkish academic congresses. Finally, the policy appears to have negatively affected student satisfaction with the services offered to them by faculty at state universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in attention from the scholarly communications and research community to open access (OA) and open data practices. These are potentially related because journal publication policies and practices both signal disciplinary norms and provide direct incentives for data sharing and citation. However, there is little research evaluating the data policies of OA journals. In this study we analyse the state of data policies for OA journals by employing random sampling of the Directory of Open Access Journals and Open Journal Systems journal directories and applying a coding framework that integrates both previous studies and emerging taxonomies of data sharing and citation. This study, for the first time, reveals both the low prevalence of datasharing policies and practices in OA journals, which differs from the previous studies of commercial journals in specific disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the challenges of labour provision in the open-access online scholarly publishing environment. While the technological underpinnings of open access imply an abundance, it is also the case that the labour that remains necessary in publishing processes is based on a set of economics that are scarce: the availability of human time, effort, and expertise. I here argue, with a demonstration of some of the labours of XML typesetting, that we are unlikely to realize the transformations of an abundant proliferation of scholarship without a substantial change and redistribution of labour functions to authors, which is unlikely to be socially accepted. The resultant outputs from this process would also, I argue, be less likely to be machine readable and semantically rich, thereby conflicting with other imagined digital possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate surrounding open access journal publishing is part of a broader debate related to the electronic dissemination of information. Compared to print journals, electronic journals have lower publishing costs and allow for expanded access to scholarly research. However, open access publishing introduces an added cost of evaluating an ever-increasing number of published sources and the potential for misinformation. This paper analyses the traditional and open access scholarly publishing models from an economic perspective. Analysing the alternative market structures of these models can help to identify strategies to maximize net benefits in the scholarly publishing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clayton M. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma is viewed within academic circles as one of the most important management books of the last twenty years. Christensen described the impact that disruptive and sustaining technologies had on various industries. Yet no one has investigated disruptive and sustaining technologies by applying Christensen's analytical framework to scholarly journals. This paper begins by discussing Christensen's principles of disruptive and sustaining technologies and the response that other intellectuals have had to their explanatory power and possibility. The paper next discusses how scholarly publishers are being affected by disruptive or sustaining technologies, specifically digital journal operations (e.g., open access, preprints, library publishing operations, and open-resource repositories). What strategies, then, can journal publishers, university presses, or academic societies take to preserve their pivotal role when scholarly journal publishing continues to change in response to sustaining and disruptive digital technologies? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of open access publishing necessitates evaluating the quality of a plethora of new journals. The problem of ensuring quality is inherent in the benefits and goals of open access publishing, which attempts to establish a system for reporting research findings that is inclusive and expeditious. However, inclusivity and speed may run counter to the goals of quality and reliability, and the pressure for researchers to publish creates incentives to participate in a fraudulent system. This paper presents an alternative approach to evaluating the legitimacy of open access publications. Those concerned about the quality of open access publishing have attempted to evaluate journals based on criteria that refer to externally available information. The approach used here provides additional, internal information about participation in journals' review processes. This additional information, namely, documentation of the process from submission through review to acceptance, is crucial for evaluating potentially fraudulent open access journals that might appear legitimate based on publicly available information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of scholarly journals being published in Korea has massively expanded since the late 1990s, and this expansion has been accompanied by larger numbers of international scholars from outside Korea publishing in Korean journals. Alongside this expansion in the number of Korean journals has been an increase in competition among journals, a need for journals to seek recognition from various authorities, and a desire to expand readership beyond Korea. However, little has been written about these important changes in Korean scholarly publishing. This article provides an overview of the current state of Korean scholarly publishing and then examines the experiences of international academics publishing in Korean journals. Finally, this article discusses five lessons that can productively inform those who are refashioning Korean journals in this new, highly competitive environment of global publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting and publishing research is at the heart of the academic social scientist's job. Understanding the publication process is critical for any scholar looking for a successful career. The current study draws on survey data from 117 editors of social science journals to identify how editors experience their jobs, how manuscript reviews are processed, and what aspects of editors, journals, and manuscripts are most important to editors' publication decisions. Results suggest that editors relied on their editorial boards and associate editors to do reviews and give advice, that the greatest challenge editors faced in dealing with manuscripts was slow reviewers, and that rarely did editors face allegations of plagiarism or have to deal with inappropriate reviews they did not want to send to the author(s). Quality of writing and strength of findings are the most influential factors in journals' acceptance rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the University of Huddersfield Press launched Fields: The Journal of Huddersfield Student Research. The journal was developed with two key purposes: ensuring that high quality student research was made available to a broader audience and inspiring students to work to the highest standards by considering the potential of their work for impact in the wider world. The existing literature is reviewed regarding the growth of student research journals as well as some of the benefits these journals can offer to students. The institutional rationale for Fields is outlined, and the process of setting up a multi-disciplinary open access student research journal is discussed. The outcomes of this evaluation are presented with particular focus on the lessons learned and on future developments to improve support for authors. The experience of the project team will be useful to universities and university presses considering strategies for supporting students in the development of research for publication/dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine the impact of open access on the publishing policies of Spanish scholarly journals indexed by Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. The study sample was obtained in October 2013. After discarding those that were not published in Spain and those that were inactive, we were left with a total of 406 journals (392 in Scopus and 171 in WoS, with an overlap of 157). Seven key indicators were established: age, subject area, language, publisher, portals, type of access, and copyright. Most of the data were gathered by directly analyzing the websites of the journals. Information from the Dulcinea directory was also used. Most of the journals (63 per cent of the total) were first published after 1980. Universities and commercial publishers were the most significant publishers, accounting for 42 per cent and 31 per cent of all journals, respectively. Social sciences and health sciences were the most significant disciplines, accounting for 33 per cent each. Of the journals, 60 per cent were available free immediately after publication and 76 per cent granted permission for self-archiving a version of the manuscript. By combining the two results, we estimated that 48 per cent of all journals were open access (offering free access and permission for self-archiving). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As contributors to academic journals, we expect our submissions to be treated with a certain amount of respect by editors and dealt with expeditiously; we want to see our papers published. An editor who is allowing a submission to 'gather dust' is not acting in the best interests of either their authors or their journal. I recommend that authors sometimes review their list of papers ' in press,' ' in review,' and 'submitted,' and those that have stopped moving should be withdrawn and submitted elsewhere. An editor who fails to give their contributors timely support is not deserving of their papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though it is widely accepted that academic publishing has both communication and credentialing functions, there have been no systematic attempts to categorize journals according to their various socio-political aims since Toby Miller's intervention in the early 2000s. Yet one-third of all peer-reviewed academic journals currently in print did not even exist at the time of his writing. This article takes these new journals into account in order to develop a systematic typology of academic journals based on their intended social purpose, both within and beyond the academy. After an overview of similar typologies and their strengths and limitations, the author proposes a tripartite typology for academic journals: journals of (1) record, (2) transformational activism, and (3) professional legitimation. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the symbiotic relationship between the academy and scholarly publishing and argues that, in the digital age, this relationship is as important as ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To learn about the current situation of open access (OA) in Chinese social science journals, 714 journals listed in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) in 2012 to 2013 were chosen to investigate, and search engines were used to analyze the OA status of these journals and their articles. The results showed that 13.73 per cent of journals in the CSSCI are OA, their OA format is mostly PDF, and 84.69 per cent of their OA resources are gathered from the publishing years 2004 to 2012. The level of OA journals focusing on different subjects is unbalanced in China. Articles from each journal published in 2007 were selected according to different standards to study the relationship of OA and citation. The results showed that the OA level of highly cited articles is higher than that of low- and non-cited articles. Factors that may restrict OA development in China were analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editors have a difficult and labour-intensive job, and need help. But are editorial boards and editorial advisory boards a help or a hindrance? These boards need to be managed by the editor, who must decide if what are needed are workers or figureheads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional collaboration in academia is valued because it is believed to encourage the generation and synthesis of ideas, to enhance workplace environments, and to comprise a key element in mentoring practices. Collaboration in writing is often of two types: formal co-authorship or informal commentary on colleagues' work. Formal co-authorship is a topic that usually draws more attention for its problems and potential controversies than for its putative benefits. In our study, we examined professional academic co-authorship. Focusing on the field of education, we identified four research sub-fields (general education, educational psychology, language studies, and literacy studies) and analysed academic peer-reviewed journals from each of these sub-fields to establish how much collaboration exists in published articles. We then examined the extent to which graduate students are co-authors in these publications and what role this collaboration takes. Implications for collaboration with and between graduate students are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The open-access (OA) journals among the 1003 journals sponsored by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) were identified. Information about the following aspects of the journals were collected and analysed: when each journal was established, its publication cycle, its system model, its region, its discipline, the time between an issue's publication and the posting of the online version, the number of issues that have been made OA, and length of time that it has had an OA policy. On the basis of these results, problems associated with OA journals sponsored by CAST were found and relevant approaches that can promote OA publication in China were recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years, several authors have opined that the multitude of reference styles used in scholarly journals is entirely pointless. In this brief note, a back-of-the- envelope calculation shows that this profusion of styles leads to significant waste of researchers’ time and financial resources, all of which could be spent on far more meaningful pursuits. A simple solution is for all journals to adopt a single reference format. This could happen relatively easily, it is argued, if major funding agencies decided to back the idea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the little journal to do in this era of impact factors, burgeoning lists of international publications available in both hard copy and online, and academic effort being increasingly focused on attaining the highest profile for an individual’s home institution? It seems that viable models are get big, if you can, or stay small and serve a specialist/regional audience. The middle ground of a moderate profile journal that does not appear on the right citation indices appears to be a recipe for extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a scientist develops, a referencing system (linking results/hypotheses to sources) evolves in the mind. This mind-map is an essential working tool that uses indexing features—such as author names—as reference points. The Harvard style (HS), in which citations in the text are made of names and years of publication and the references are listed in alphabetical order, actively helps to establish this mind-map. In our view, the Vancouver style (VS), in which citations in the text are numbers and the references are listed in order of appearance within the text, does not enhance the formation of a mind-map in a similar way and makes detections of incongruity between the reader’s mind-map and the text more difficult. In an ideal academic world, HS would be used because of these two effects: constant education of and easy quality control by the scientific reader. Although VS reduces printing space and allows easier reading for less academically trained readers, scientific readers may find this style difficult when trying to check and verify sources. For reviewers, who cannot opt not to make such checks, VS is even more tedious. We advocate that journals using VS in print should use HS for the reviewing process; further, in the final printed version, the references should be numbered and listed alphabetically rather than according to the order in which they are cited. Especially for maturing scientists, reading texts with HS referencing is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a set of values and goals that endures in scholarly publishing through the vagaries of format innovations, changing market conditions, and shifting intellectual fashions: a commitment to the idea of ideas; dedication to the essentials of communication, even at the price of hiding our part as publishers in the equation; and an appreciation of the power of transforming thought. As scholarly publishers, we nurture the 'play' of thought that is the life of the mind, and, in turn, in becoming what we do, we are the better for it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The screening process of journal articles, done to determine the suitability for publication, is presently done manually. The chief editor or an assistant will read and check the submitted articles against some standard criteria of the journal. With the increase in the number of submissions, this task becomes a burden, which in turn causes delays in giving initial feedback to the authors. The objective of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of an automated document analyser that can be used by editors for initial screening of journal articles. This analyser was developed so that it can be used within a Microsoft Word environment via VBA macros. The current version of the software can determine the length of the title, information about author(s), the length of the abstract, number of keywords, the number of words in the content, the presence or absence of an acknowledgement, and whether a specific journal is cited in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the status of the book review as a form of scholarly publication in the humanities, looking at the role and characteristics of humanities book reviews and at who writes them and why. It examines evidence for the influence and impact of book reviews in the humanities and makes suggestions for the future of the scholarly book review in an online information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics can design their research programs, mastermind field exercises in exotic locations, arrange their teaching schedules, and organize conferences, but may stumble when faced with the task of writing up their data and ideas for publication. In truth, academic authorship is just another exercise that needs to be planned. Here is a simple plan that might work for you. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on manuscript reviews as a means to enhance the quality of published research and provide fair and constructive feedback to authors. After many years of experience as editor-in-chief of an academic management journal, it became apparent to me that the best published research involves reviewers going beyond the common practice of mere 'gatekeeping' to performing a value-added role in promising research. Strategies for achieving this goal, including ethical considerations and practical applications, are set forth. This article should be of value to reviewers and editors who desire to be proactive in enhancing the quality of published research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to study the peer-review process for articles in Iran's accredited scientific journals. The study considered the types of refereeing currently practised, the decision-making methods and criteria for acceptance of articles, the major decision makers, and the current norms in the peer-review process. The method used was a survey, and the data-collecting tool was a questionnaire. The statistical population of this research included 245 scientific journals. The results of the study show that, currently, the predominant type of refereeing for articles submitted to these journals is 'double blind' and the prevailing method of informing authors about the results of manuscript evaluation is 'commenting on the manuscript after refereeing it and after consideration in an editorial board meeting.' The findings also indicate that two criteria-'Originality and creativity of the research' and 'Being within the journal's scope'-play the most important role in article acceptance. Of the five main parties cooperating in the peer-review process for these journals, the editorial board plays the most fundamental role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, the Online Journal of Rural Research and Policy (OJRRP) was launched. The publication is an example of the ability of academia to create narrowly defined scholarly journals aimed at a small, targeted readership while relying on a meagre budget. This article discusses the factors that fostered the creation of hundreds of online-only journals, as well as providing a case study of the creation of OJRRP and the long-term implications of online cross-disciplinary publications. Areas covered include sponsorship, editorial board, editorial staff, software, link rot, code, promotional activities, tracking and supporting usage, and, perhaps most importantly, long-term sustainability. The OJRRP experience is presented along with lessons learned in each area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores an issue that has been neglected in Australia, the intertwined fates of the scholarly book and the university press. These institutions face two significant threats: the commercialization of the university, which has left academics with less time for the patient research and writing needed to produce a monograph, and the 'tyranny of the journal article' (in contrast to that of the monograph, which has been noted in American debates), which has devalued the monograph and thus reduced some of the incentive for academics to write one. After examining the decline of university presses in Australia, the article concludes that they, and the monographs they publish, will best flourish with increased philanthropic, governmental, and university funding; careful list diversification; creative commissioning; cross-subsidization; and the savvy use of electronic and traditional forms of publishing and dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's peer-review process for scientific articles is unnecessarily opaque and offers few incentives to referees. Likewise, the publishing process is unnecessarily inefficient, and its results are only rarely made freely available to the public. This article outlines a comparatively simple extension of arXiv.org, an online preprint archive widely used in the mathematical and physical sciences, that addresses both of these problems. Under the proposal, editors invite referees to write public and signed reviews to be attached to the posted preprints, and then elevate selected articles to 'published' status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of current developments are creating questions over present models of publishing and scholarly communication. Will new journals continue to be launched? Will open-access developments such as subject or institutional repositories reach a tipping point at which libraries will start to cancel journal subscriptions? Is the journal article too static a mechanism, by comparison to the ways in which scholars are able to interact using blogs and wikis? Steadily emerging is a new future for the journal as part of an overall network of knowledge creation and scholarly communication. We are moving away from a world in which a few producers generate content to transmit to a set of users. Instead, the world of knowledge creation has a variety of routes through which research can be disseminated and feedback mechanisms facilitated by a range of collaborative tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the roundtable discussion held by members of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) at the Modern Language Association meeting in December 2008 in San Francisco, California. The author explains that topics included the future of scholarly publishing, the electronic consolidation of scholarly journals, and the regulation of scholarly content by libraries.

The advent of online journals has opened a vast opportunity for small journals published by a variety of institutions. It also has given scholars many more options, from more general publications to far more journals addressing very narrowly defined subjects, and it suggests that in the near future the role of online journals and peer review will radically change. The author proposes roles for user-generated content and university libraries in the evaluation and publication of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let academics in developing countries shine in the international publishing community. A suggestion that they should target their own local journals would mean that their best research would reach only a limited audience, that they would probably be poorly regarded by promotion committees, that they would be unfavourably appraised by international grant-awarding agencies, and, in all probability, that publication would follow only after an inordinately long wait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study described in this report grew from recommendations for an investigation into journal economics by the National Humanities Alliance Task Force on Open Access and Scholarly Communications. Since experiments are underway to understand and enable a range of options for a shift to an open access (OA) business model for publishing some scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals, the question arises, Do these same options exist for a similar shift within humanities and social science (HSS) journals? Findings are reported from detailed analyses of the publishing economics, including all revenues and all costs, of eight flagship US journals across a number of different HSS disciplines. Using actual business information from their association publishers for each of the years 2005, 2006, and 2007, these findings clarify that for this sample of journals, an OA business model based only on revenue from the research article author or producer would not be sufficient to sustain these journals. The research articles published in these journals were longer than typical STM journal articles, and the percentage of non-article content (e.g., book reviews and other scholarly content) was greater. Information-gathering tools and methodologies that enable like-for-like comparison of journal revenues and costs were developed and are described in the report. As an initial in-depth business review of a sample of HSS journals, the report further clarifies some of the key differences between STM and HSS journals, articulates recent journal performance, makes tentative conclusions based on this sample, and proposes further questions that need to be answered to support a shift to OA business models that are sustainable across HSS journal publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journal prices have long been a matter of controversy. Lacking has been any objective information on costs that could be used to judge whether price increases have been justified by rising costs. Using a rare, publicly available set of data for the American Economic Review, the premier journal in economics, this article normalizes costs for number of issues per annum, number of pages per issue, and print quantities per issue to construct an index for the costs of producing this journal. It shows that costs have in fact increased more slowly than the general rate of inflation and argues that the cost experience of this journal provides a reference point for academic journals generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]