I agree completely with what Jan and David have said. If the purpose a journal is to communicate between author and reader without frills and publisher-junk (cf. Tufte's chart-junk) then Hindawi journals come high up my list. Conversely many mainstream publishers' technical offerings are simply appalling. They create output which is designed to promote and brand the publisher rather than communicate science.
As I am partially moving into plant science I have been working on content-mining (machine reading) the Hindawi International Journal of Agronomy (http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ija/ ). The content is a clear reporting of basic scientific knowledge; it may not enhance author's prestige factors in our sick metric society, but it provides material that is useful for making sure the world has enough to eat. It's honest (compliant with the Open Definition, CC-BY) well prepared and with no wasted effort on unnecessary publisher-junk (e.g. publisher marketing). In particular the content is well prepared (e.g. uses compliant HTML and Unicode, with vector graphics) while larger publishers like XXxXXXX destroy vector graphics, XXX can't even create compliant XML and Xxxxxxxx and many others actively lobby against contentmining. P. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069
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