Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, July 20, 2006

Toronto workshop on OA journals

Peter Stogios and Karla Badger, As of yet, not all doors are Open Access, Hypothesis, May 2006. A report on the University of Toronto's Workshop on Open Access Journals (March 9, 2006). Excerpt:

Is Open Access (OA) a reality? Do successful models of OA journals exist? What are the potential benefits and repercussions of a move toward OA journal establishment? Invited speakers sought to answer these questions in an event hosted by the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto in early March....

Leslie Chan, Director of New Media Studies at the U of T Scarborough campus, and Associate Director of Bioline International, provided a short course on open access....Chan outlined some of the potential benefits of Open Access: [1] Expanded research programs and manuscript publication by researchers in developing countries with access to a current knowledge base. [2] Strengthened institutional profiles or prestige resulting from the development of OA institutional repositories. [3] Increased exchange of material between disciplines. [4] Improved policy development, news reporting, and teaching with up-to-date public access to research results....

The development of Canadian OA journals was highlighted in this event. Gunther Eysenbach, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, introduced the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR)....David Moorman, Senior Policy Advisor for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) described the complexity of grant evaluation for OA journals....The day ended with a lecture from Richard Wellen, Associate Professor of Business and Society at York University...[who] suggested a potential loss of editorial vision, credibility, and effective indexing in an entirely OA system.