From: Dan Scott <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:34:10 +0100

Dear group members

*Apologies for cross posting*

I am writing to you with information that can help your faculty,
researchers, students and librarians to increase the reach and speed
of your university’s output. On September 24th, the first issue of
Social Sciences Directory was published. This is a new
multi-disciplinary publication, which aims to revolutionise scholarly
publishing by providing quality, affordable content without the
barrier of subscription paywalls. Our approach is modern and
progressive, whilst adhering to recognised publishing standards. We
use OJS software, which means we can be indexed by WorldCat, and use a
Creative Commons CC-BY licence.

We aim to:

* capture the best of international research across the disciplines of
social sciences and arts & humanities

*  conduct peer-review and publish papers in online formats

*  facilitate discussion and information sharing through discussion platforms

* augment research content with valuable additional reading materials
such as dissertations, reviews, presentations and reports

Our first issue contains papers on

* Successful transition to retirement in Australia

* Knowledge, attitude and belief of pregnant women towards safe
motherhood in a rural Indian setting

* Gender equality in the workplace: the perceptive reality

Our philosophy is that research in one field can also have
applications in areas of research beyond that intended and the
inter-disciplinary nature of a large collection of work – spanning the
boundaries of subject and state - will help to cross-fertilise ideas.
Open access publishing provides significant benefits for authors and
readers alike in speeding up the time to publication and
dissemination, author copyright retention and providing
value-for-money for taxpayers. We hope to publish a regular schedule
of research going forwards, as well as launching a sister website
Humanities Directory in the next few weeks.

Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory are funded by
author contributions or through a low cost institutional membership
fee. For GBP2,000/USD3,000, a university’s faculty and researchers
would be able to submit unlimited numbers of articles for peer review
and publication until the end of 2013. Again, I would be grateful if
this information could be passed on with a request to contact us if
there is interest.

We recognise the difficulty in moving from traditional journal
publishing to new forms. You want to be able to trust that the
publication maintains quality standards and maximises dissemination of
your department’s work. We also firmly believe that Social Sciences
Directory and Humanities Directory address many of the flaws within
the scholarly publishing industry and can provide better levels of
service. Submissions have been received from the UK, Australia,
France, Brazil, Ethiopia, India and Kenya, whilst editors and
reviewers from all over the world have offered their services,
demonstrating an appetite and widespread support for the initiative.
We hope that you will support our cause, will encourage your
departments to consider us when choosing where to publish and,
importantly, will include Social Sciences Directory and Humanities
Directory in your library catalogue.

Yours sincerely

Dan Scott MA, BA (Hons)
Director
Social Sciences Directory Limited
www.socialsciencesdirectory.com
www.humanitiesdirectory.com