Advanced Research Journals is an apparently new OA publisher. I say "apparently" because nothing on the site speaks about OA, although a May 5 listserv call for papers in broken English says that ARJ publishes OA journals ("Advanced Research Journals are an Open Access online journal..."). I've seen no press release announcing the launch, even now that I've gone looking. The web site includes no "about" page and no contact info for the company. The "help" link isn't (yet) activated. Of the 13 journal titles listed in the sidebar, 3 titles are links and 10 titles are unlinked phrases. The links all point to separate journal pages, but none of the journals has any content yet. Each has a page of instructions for authors, but they don't mention OA or any kind of publication fee. I didn't blog ARJ when I first ran across it, last week, because I couldn't tell how old it was and there wasn't much to blog.
But on Sunday, Jim Till noticed something strange and blogworthy: if you click on the ARJ logo on the home page, you are sent to the ScienceDirect home page. He says "it would be of interest to find out whether or not Advanced Research Journals is sponsored by Elsevier."
Yes, it would. If this is another Elsevier deception, would it link to ScienceDirect from the ARJ logo? If it's a candid attempt to test the waters of OA publishing, perhaps to play catch-up with Springer after Springer's acquisition of BMC, then wouldn't it be more candid? If it's under construction, and a full explanation is still to come, why raise questions and suspicions by starting with vaporous journals rather than a clear announcement of the plan?
BTW #1, a search for "advanced research journals" at ScienceDirect draws a blank.
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.
