From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>:
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:03:13 +0000

Subject: RE: Could the University of Iowa Libraries save over $2 million

I still do not know what the word "led" means. I take it that these journals
are only facilitated by libraries through publishing services. This is
presumably different from what is envisioned in campus based publishing (see
the SPARC site) where one way of working encouraged is for library-based
university presses to take responsibility for journals.

Editorial policy in the great majority of journals is "led" by the editors
in chief or sometimes by a group of editors backed up by an editorial board.
In the case of some learned society journals the editorial policy may be
"led" by a publication committee in collaboration with the editorial
structure. I suppose you could argue that some OA publishers such as Hindawi
who do not have editors-in-chief for their journals so these journals are
"led" as well as owned by the publisher. Someone has to have responsibility
for editorial policy and procedures which is usually enshrined in a contract
between responsible for the risk and investment (a publisher) and the
editors.

However does "led" mean "owned". Are these journals "owned" by a scholar or
a group of scholars who take the risk and investment and who are responsible
for the continuance of the journal and its continuing availability if they
give it up. I am not clear what the difference is between a group of
scholars or a learned society/association in business terms or any other
terms except that the latter represents the aspirations of an academic
community and the former just represents the aspirations of a group of
people.

Anthony.

-----Original Message-----
From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:50:32 -0800

Anthony Watkinson wrote:

> What are scholar-led journals please?

Response:  journals led by active scholars (as opposed to professional
not-for-profit or commercial publishers). These are often small
independent journals; many find online hosting and support services
through their libraries.

Edgar and Willinsky talk about the OJS phenonenom as a renaissance of
scholar led publishing in this article:  Edgar, B. D., & Willinsky, J.
(2010) (In press). A survey of the scholarly journals using open
journal systems. Scholarly and Research Communication, Retrieved
August  27, 2011 from http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/2773

In brief, the free, open source Open Journal Systems developed by
Willinsky and colleagues in the Public Knowledge Project, is now used
by over 10 thousand journals all over the world, many of which are
smaller independent journals led by scholars. The group surveyed had
an average expenditure of $188 per article. A full flip to this system
would result in the greatest cost savings for libraries (over 90% of
current spend). The $2 million in savings for Iowa assumes a mixed
model, half of publishing in open access journals using OJS at $188
per article, and the other half using the article processing fee
approach with an average of $1,350 (the PLoS ONE fee).

If anyone is interested in more detail, please see chapter 4 of my
draft dissertation, The Economics of Scholarly Communication in
Transition:

http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/chapter-4-economics-of-scholarly-c
ommunication-in-transition/

There are some charts and graphs, so I like to think that it's easier
reading that one might guess from the title.

best,

Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com