Jim Till, Assessing health services research journals, Be openly accessible or be obscure blog, February 11, 2008. Contains a discussion of journals in the field of health services research, especially from a Canadian perspective, including ranking (by SCImago, Eigenfactor, etc.), cost-effectiveness, self-archiving policy, and processing fees for OA. Excerpt:
So, what lessons might be learned from these comparisons? Some points to consider:
a) The policies of publishers about Green OA (archiving of post-prints) for these journals range from non-compliant (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) to complex (Blackwoods) and/or obscure (Project Hope, Blackwoods). The effort required to try to obtain unambiguous information about these Green OA policies is sometimes ridiculous, to an extent that is almost comical.
b) The preferred alternative to Green OA is Gold OA (paid open access to the full text of journal contents). The most prominent OA publisher in the HSR field is BioMed Central (BMC).
c) Some publishers (e.g. Blackwell, Longwoods) do provide Hybrid OA (paid access to individual articles), but the article-processing fees are expensive (e.g. in comparison with BMC's Gold OA journals). Such programs may also have other drawbacks. See Peter Suber's "Nine key questions to ask about any hybrid journal program"...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 2/13/2008 04:28:00 PM.
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.
