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