The Annals of Improbable Research ("Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK") converted to OA back in December 2007. But it just ran into a barrier that other OA journals won't face: The DOAJ decided not to index it. From the AIR announcement:
This week we learned that open-access research is serious business.
Recently, our magazine — the Annals of Improbable Research — went “open access”. We now put all our content online free, and are gradually adding the content from past issues, too.
Librarians, ever more squeezed for funds, had been urging us to do this. And then, they said, be sure to tell the Directory of Open Access Journals.
We wrote to the DOAJ, asking to be included on their list. DOAJ’s motto is “free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages.” But a DOAJ administrator wrote back, explaining:
“I do not think we will be able to include the Annals of Improbable Research, even if I am sure the magazine does make people both laugh and think.
It is not, however, scientific or scholarly in the way we expect journals in DOAJ to be, meaning making people think, only.”
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/29/2008 05:55:00 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.
