All,
Just some further info..
1) Social science journals tend to lag behind trends in open access
publishing compared to the medical/health/lifescience fields. As you are
probably aware PLoS (Public Library of Science) and BMC (BioMed Central)
are very well established open access publishers whose flagship journals
compete with the very top journals (eg BMJ, Lancet, Nature Medicine,
JAMA etc). Many PLoS/BMC journals are also indexed in Thomson ISI,
SCOPUS etc
2) These organisations do not have publishing charges, or reduce them,
for those that can make a case not to pay (ie some grad students,
researchers from low-income countries) The implied idea is that
researchers in resource rich nations can help indirectly subsidise
researchers in resource poor settings. Personally, I don't mind paying
page/publication charges if this principle is maintained.
3) Public research funders (eg MRC, BBSRC, BHF, CRUK, Wellcome Trust)
are increasingly insisting that outputs deriving from public grants
should be open access either in online repositories (eg UKPubMed
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/) or in free to access journals. Funders themselves
are also starting to run open access peer-reviewed journals that have no
publishing charges (eg NIH publication Preventing Chronic Disease).
Steve
--
Steven Cummins MSc PhD
Senior Lecturer & NIHR Fellow
Department of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
T: 44 020 7882 7653 (direct)
F: 44 020 7882 7479
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W: Healthy Environments Research Programme
http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/healthyenvironments/index.html
http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/cumminss.html
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