Dear Andrew, Thank you for putting a conversation about open access journals on the table, even last night I invested hours looking at many of them in order to decide where to publish. I guess a kind of "natural selection" will occur to Open Access journals. They are a boom (and many are probably a fashion) now, but only the good ones are going to survive. Meanwhile, readers need to be cautious when looking into articles there and take into account only good articles for their job. There is no thumb rule for judging this, so it is also a big responsability for the referees of such journals to make a job as good as the ones of many "classic" journals. Surely they do. Competition of open-access yournals may eventually obligate to the best classic journals to become open. Since open access journals are at least partially sponsored by authors istead of readers, I think that some Classic journals will ask authors to pay a fee. It may become a problem to us to find sponsorship. As time goes by, we'll see if these and other predictions are right. Meanwhile, I do my best for publishing in journals having reputable editorial boards, doesn't matter if they are "classic" or "open access" journals. In general, I would prefer my work to be judged by strict referees, though publishing a lot is also necessary for me. Finally, I think it is realistic to expect that many open access journals will replace classic ones on the top positions of impact factor lists. I think that will challenge impact factor as a criterion to define how "good" a journal is. Ciao Brother!!
Edgardo --- Edgardo Garrido-Pérez Goettingen University (Germany) Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán (Mexico) > Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:42:48 -0500 > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Open access versus traditional publication models > To: [email protected] > > Dear Ecologers, > > I'd like to probe the forum on people's opinion of the publication models > available to scientists today. I (and probably most of us) have seen a > massive rise in the number of open access publications over just the last > 2-3 years. And yet this seems to be happening alongside an explosion in the > number of traditional-style publications as well. What does this all mean > for us ecologists trying to get our studies read by as many people as > possible and by those that can take your information and make a difference > with it – either through further research or policy? > > I'll be honest that I'm leery of many of the new open access journals. I do > see value in them, especially for those who are at underfunded research > centers that don't have access to many of the mainstream publications. On > the other hand, what are they? Do they ultimately reach as many people? And > do they reach the "right" people – the ones that control aspects of policy > or have top-tier research programs. Are these new journals to be indexed in > Web of Science or the other academic search engines? So many questions > surround this new format and I just wonder what the rest of the community > thinks. > > Andrew > -- > Andrew L. Rypel > Box 870206 > Department of Biological Sciences > University of Alabama > Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 > Office: (205)348-4439 > Mobile: (205)886-9916 > http://bama.ua.edu/~rypel001 _________________________________________________________________ Invite your mail contacts to join your friends list with Windows Live Spaces. It's easy! http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us
