Matthew Mayernik, The Prevalence of Additional Electronic Features in Pure E-Journals. Abstract: "Electronic journals are offered in many forms, some available in both print and electronic form, and some in electronic form alone. Purely electronic journals have had the opportunity to develop new features and formats that take advantage of the online environment. This paper uses a genre-based analysis to look at online journals in two fields, physics and psychology, focusing on whether purely electronic journals do in fact feature elements and formats that would be impossible to present in print form, and the prevalence of such features across the fields. Journals were examined for the use of non-linearity, interactivity, multimedia, multiple use, and rapid publication. The results of the study indicate that additional features are only selectively used in electronic journals, and suggest that few incentives exist for authors and publishers to utilize additional features more, as conventionally structured articles fulfill the needs of the scholarly journal article genre."
Paul Peters, Redefining Scholarly Publishing as a Service Industry. Abstract: "The landscape of the scholarly publishing market has been largely defined by subscription-based publishing models that have existed since the earliest days of scholarly journal publishing. If there is a widespread shift from these subscription-based models to an open-access model based on publication charges, the fundamental nature of the scholarly publishing industry will transform from that of a content-providing industry to a service-providing industry. The benefits that this transformation will bring to the research community are in many ways as important as the benefits that an open access model will have in terms of increasing online access to scholarly literature."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/16/2007 08:05:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
