Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Where are the open access library journals?

I'm currently working on a paper that I would like to publish in a peer-reviewed library journal. Choosing a journal for publication is a serious issue, there are a number of criteria to consider. I would like to publish in an open access journal, and there are a few in the library profession, but there are significant reasons for not considering extant OA library journals.

Here are my criteria, generally in the order of importance.
  • Scope of the journal: I want to publish in a journal that covers the area addressed by my paper.
  • High impact: I want to publish in a journal that is highly respected and widely read. I would like to maximize the chance that my paper is eventually cited.
  • Online: It has to be online.
  • Open access: I support open access for multiple reasons, including the general high level of access they provide to research, as well as the benefits they provide to authors in terms of impact.
  • Non-profit: I would prefer to publish in a journal published by a scholarly/professional society or other non-profit (even though my retirement fund owns stock in Reed Elsevier, but that's another blog entry).
When I look at the top library journals, there are very few that meet all of these criteria. DLib is one of the premier open access journals, but it is focused on digital libraries from a research perspective. I'm looking for a journal whose audience consists of practicing librarians, not researchers. None of the premier journals that cover academic libraries in general (such as College and Research Libraries, portal: Libraries and the Academy, and the Journal of Academic Librarianship) are open access. Some of the journals with a narrower focus (Library Research, Collections, and Technical Services) aren't even online, except perhaps in full-text databases like Wilson Web.

There are a few open access library journals, but they are not generally high impact. The Directory of Open Access Journals and Ulrichsweb.com have listings of OA journals in LIS. Thompson's Journal Citation Reports provides statistics on the impact of various LIS journals.

One would think that College and Research Libraries would be open access. It's publisher, the Association for College and Research Libraries, is a big supporter of open access.

I'll provide an update when I finish my paper.
Posted by Texadata at 9:19 AM

2 comments:

Dorothea said...

C&RL is going delayed-OA. Searching the DOAJ on "library" will find you quite a few more, but you're by and large quite right that the OA situation in library science is appalling.

Wherever you publish, at least use the SPARC Addendum to keep your self-archiving rights!

7/12/2006 1:40 PM
Heather Morrison said...

You have made some very good points, which librarians who are on editorial boards should bring up with their journals. There are some new OA journals aiming for top peer-review standards; here in Canada, two are Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, and Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research (forthcoming). The latter is primarily designed for the publication of Canadian work, however some international submissions are welcome.

A number of traditional library journals are fully green, i.e. self-archiving is allowed. College & Research Libraries is one; free access to the journal is delayed, but authors can self-archive immediately. Peer-reviewed papers are very welcome in E-LIS, an international open archive for Library and Information Science, at http://eprints.rclis.org/ (no charge for depositing or for searching). Disclosure: I am an E-LIS Editor for Canada.

7/12/2006 3:58 PM

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