The August 2005 issue of Thomson's In-Cites features a profile of Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, an OA journal whose impact factor just bumped it into the top 50% of journals in geosciences, only three years after its launch. APC is published by the Copernicus Society. Quoting APC editor Ulrich Pöschl:
The high and increasing citation rates of ACP are certainly due to multiple reasons, most of which are related to the advantages of its interactive open access journal concept (freely accessible two-stage publications with public peer review and interactive discussion as detailed on the journal website)....The interactive open access journal concept of ACP has been designed to foster scientific discussion, maximize the effectiveness and transparency of scientific quality assurance, enable rapid publication of new scientific results, and make scientific publications freely accessible....research and teaching are increasingly inhibited by a lack of scientific information density, accessibility, and reliability, and there are many good reasons for the increasing number, strength, and public recognition of initiatives and declarations aiming at worldwide open access to scientific publications (economic, educational, and scientific aspects). Some of the most important advantages of free online availability of scientific information are the opportunities for enhanced scientific quality assurance, which are unfortunately often neglected in discussions and reports about open access publishing....ACP has been the first major open access journal in the field of geosciences, and it certainly has been the first journal with two-stage publications, public peer review, and interactive discussion....[O]pen access publishing indeed allows [us] to enhance scientific quality assurance by interactive forms of review and discussion open to the whole scientific community.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/11/2005 05:22:00 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.
