Bentham Science Publishers (BSP) publishes 89 subscription journals many of which are leaders in their respective fields. BSP embarked on an ambitious program for the development and launch of up to 300 open access journals from May 2007. The open access publishing division was launched under the banner Bentham Open at www.bentham.org/open
Originally, the plan was to launch separate Letter/ Short communication journals as well as journals publishing review and research articles. This initial plan was changed some months later after creditable suggestions from some editorial board members that stratification of journals in the same area in open access would probably not succeed. Ultimately, BSP decided to publish all three article types in one subject journal as this would provide a much stronger journal and one that would attract more papers; this policy appears to be effective. Bentham Open now plans to publish 200 open access journals. Until 31st December 2007, Bentham Open has launched 163 journals.
Most major subject areas in the natural and physical sciences, medicine, engineering etc. are now covered by new open access journals launched by Bentham Open.
All submitted articles are extensively peer-reviewed with the emphasis to process submitted articles rapidly.
The Editorial Director, Dr. Matthew Honan says that the future plan is to strengthen the existing publishing program for open access journals as well as to launch a number of new open journals. Bentham Open aims to be one of the largest and successful open access journals' publishers. Currently, Bentham Open's publication fees are one of the lowest offered in the industry which are under USD 1000 per published article. In 2008, Bentham Open will announce a new, improved, innovative publication fee model for its potential authors.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/16/2008 11:20:00 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.
