SAGE and the Hindawi Publishing Corporation have today entered into an agreement to jointly launch and publish a suite of fully Open Access (OA) journals.
This is a bold strategic partnership that places SAGE as the largest academic publisher to develop a collection of Gold Open Access journals, marking the company’s continued investment in widening access to important scholarly research. SAGE is the world’s fifth largest journal publisher, with over 485 journals in the humanities, social sciences, science, technology, and medicine.
The initiative further strengthens Hindawi’s leadership in developing a strong portfolio of Open Access journals. Hindawi currently publishes more than 100 Open Access journals covering a wide range of subjects in science, technology, and medicine.
The partnership will see equal ownership between the two organizations. SAGE will have sole responsibility for the editorial development, marketing, and promotion of the new journals while Hindawi will provide the technology and expertise needed to run the publication process from the point of submission, through the peer-review process, to the point of final publication. Under the model, all SAGE-Hindawi journal articles will be made freely available online via the Hindawi platform, funded by author charges....
The SAGE-Hindawi platform will be launched at Online Information 2007, December 4-6 in London. More information on the SAGE-Hindawi initiative is available [here], along with a sign-up for the latest news about the initiative.
Comments
This is SAGE's first venture into gold OA. Although we don't know how many journals it will cover, it's probably the largest venture into gold OA by a journal publisher with no previous OA titles. It appears that the partnership will apply only to newly launched OA journals, not to existing SAGE journals converted to OA. Kudos to both publishers for working this out. I look forward to more details.
I wish I knew the balance of incentives and market research that led SAGE into this deal, bypassing a one-title experiment and committing to a many-title suite. Was it the attractions of the fee-based OA business model? (Hindawi is profitable.) Was it the prospect of jump-starting an OA line of journals, and reducing risk, using Hindawi technology and expertise? Was it a response to writing on the wall for the traditional subscription model? Was it a market study specifically focused on SAGE's present or future research niches? Perhaps these and many other factors. But whatever the details, the overall bundle of incentives should transfer to many other TA publishers, even if not to all, and TA publishers not considering a similar move might well wonder what SAGE knows that they do not know.
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.
