a look at ACRL-LA’s new

Open-Access Journal

presented by

Megan Lowe, Reference Librarian (ULM), Editor

Karen Niemla, Reference Librarian (ULM), Webmaster

Open Access Journals: A Brief Look“History” of CodexJournal DetailsHuman DetailsFirst Virtual DetailsOpen Journal Systems (OJS)Design Matters

For a more in-depth technical look, please check out Karen’s presentation “House of Cascading Style”

Also known as OAJOAJs are “digital, online, free of charge, and free

of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, 2007)Generally employ Creative Commons licensing

to protect themselves and the authorsCan be subscription-based, in so far as you

subscribe to them, but sans feeAre scholarly and facilitate the aims of

scholarly communication in a much broader sense than traditional scholarly publishing

Come in two flavors (Keener et al, 2007):Gold – “refers to journals and other published

material that are freely available online”Green – “materials that may have been

published in subscription based journals but have been made openly available via an institutional or discipline-based repository or on a website”

One warning, though – some OAJs require that submitting authors pay a fee to be published in their publications; this is one way that OAJs may generate revenue

The OAJ movement was initiated in the scientific disciplines but has been picked up by a wide array of fields

The earliest formalized document associated with OA is the Budapest Open Access Initiative which was created and signed in 2001

The movement has picked up significant momentum in the last several years (Spears & Vyse, 2007)

As of September 2009, the Directory of Open Access Journals includes 4359 titles in its “holdings”

Started as the brainchild of Megan Lowe and Mike Matthews (Northwestern State U) after attending ACRL-LA’s Pre-LUC conference “Publish & Flourish: Writing for Academic Librarians” in October 2008

But the issue of ACRL-LA sponsoring an electronic journal wasn’t discussed formally until February 2009From the beginning, it was intended to be open-access It was suggested that the OAJ could phase out the ACRL-

LA newsletter It was also discussed that it could be run on the ACRL-LA

website It would include peer-reviewed articles and book reviews

By June 2009 an Advisory Council was established, composed of John Budd (U of Missouri) and Vivian Solar, who later resigned, and Melissa Goldsmith (Nicholls)

It was discussed that the journal would be blind peer-reviewed; policies, including the style format, would be approved by the Advisory Council; and that the title (which would not be determined until late June) would include a moniker referring to it as the journal of the ACRL-LA

Once established (including have an ISSN) the journal should be added to the Directory of Open Access Journals

By late June, a title was determined by the membership through a vote in the ACRL-LA forums: Codex: the Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL

At the August 2009 meeting of the Executive Board the newsletter was officially abolished, and ACRL-LA news would be included in Codex

At that same meeting, the official position of Journal Editor (as was the position of Webmaster, currently held by Karen Niemla) was established; Journal Editor will be an appointed position; the current Editor is Megan Lowe

The first issue is due out in November/December and is composed of solicited articles; amongst those contributing articles are John Budd, Jim Elmborg, Sigrid Kelsey, Michelynn McKnight, Alma Dawson, and Ralph Boé

An ISSN as been obtained but is contingent upon publication of the first issue

A pool of peer-reviewers from around the state and beyond has already been established and is being expanded every day; the pool includes library faculty and staff

Blind peer-reviewCriteria for review are based on

RelevanceOriginalityMethodologyAbstractOrganization & StyleDocumentation

Bi-annual publicationArticles of any lengthReviews (primarily books currently)

All articles submitted are reviewed by the Editor ; articles deemed appropriate for the journal are passed to reviewers

Articles will be identified by the following ratings:Accepted without revisionsAccepted with revisionsRejected with suggested revisions to submitRejected

Creative Commons licensingFAQ is in the worksRun on the Open Journals System via the ACRL-LA

website (but more on that later)

Current Editor is Megan LoweThe Webmaster, Karen Niemla, takes care of

the technical side of thingsA pool of peer-reviewers has been accumulated

from volunteers around the state and beyond, but we welcome more – just contact the Editor!

Peer-reviewers who are interested in doing book reviews as well are encouraged to express this to the Editor; folks interested in only doing book reviews are also encouraged to contact the Editor

Karen Niemla, Webmaster

You’re looking at You’re looking at a digital objecta digital object

““Chairs are for Chairs are for Sitting. PDF is for Sitting. PDF is for

Printing.”Printing.”--webpagesthatsuck.com--webpagesthatsuck.com

http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojshttp://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs

languagelanguage

databasedatabase

*think**think*

(read: you)(read: you)

(tiny, ain’t they?)(tiny, ain’t they?)

À Suivre!À Suivre!

Presentation URL http://www.bambam.info/luc09ACRL-LA Website http://www.acrlla.orgOJS Website http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojsOur Contact Info

Megan Lowe, Editor: lowe@ulm.eduKaren Niemla, Webmaster: niemla@ulm.edu

ACRL-LA minutes (Executive and Business)Budapest Open Access InitiativeDirectory of Open Access JournalsPeter Suber’s Open Access OverviewPublic Knowledge Project: Open Journal SystemsSpears, M., & Vyse, R. (2007, Fall2007). The Human

Right To Know and the Open Access Movement: An Optimal Path for Scholarly Journals. PNLA Quarterly, 72(1), 10-11. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text database.

10 Things You Should Know About Scholarly Communication

If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!