Atmospheric scientist Bryan Lawrence, in a blog deliberation about impact factors: 'Of course it's easy to produce such a list [of high to low impact journals], but given my own priorities change, surely so too do the communities - are we really a normal distribution? What about people working in areas where there are simply less people working? Should academic research rankings depend on the herd? I'm sure the RAE normalises these things somehow, but it's still rather discomforting. And what about Open Access publishing? Those in the scholarly publications game know that the world is moving towards Open Publishing. There is evidence that open access publishing increases impact, but most of us don't quite match that with our subliminal ranking of journals with our actions. It is certainly true now that i am far more likely to read a journal article if I can get to it online, and that is starting to sway my decision about where to publish.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/26/2005 11:34:00 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.
