Dear Peter
In answer to your question, I worked in subscription publishing and became so infuriated with its iniquities that I set out to provide an alternative, as outlined below. On September 24th, the first issue of Social Sciences Directory <http://socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/index> was published and it will be followed shortly by Humanities Directory <http://humanitiesdirectory.com/index.php/humanitiesdirectory/index> . These are new multi-disciplinary publications, which aim 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. I am writing to ask if you will help us to disseminate information by passing on details to your members, and by doing so benefiting the faculty, researchers, students and librarians of your memberships institutions by increasing the reach and speed of their research output. We would also be delighted to talk to your association or society directly about possible publishing partnerships. 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 <http://socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/article/view/19> · Knowledge, attitude and belief of pregnant women towards safe motherhood in a rural Indian setting <http://socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/article/view/23> · Gender equality in the workplace: the perceptive reality <http://socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/article/view/24> 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 aim to publish a regular schedule of research going forwards. 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 departments work. We also firmly believe that Social Sciences Directory addresses 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 members to consider us when choosing where to publish and, if possible, mention Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory on your website. Yours sincerely Dan Scott MA, BA (Hons) Director Social Sciences Directory Limited T: +44 (0)1423 326 257 M: +44 (0)770 381 2042 www.socialsciencesdirectory.com <http://www.humanitiesdirectory.com> www.humanitiesdirectory.com READ IT. WRITE IT. CITE IT. Social Sciences Directory is an affiliate member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) <http://oaspa.org/> . Dan Scott will be a speaker at the Munin open access conference <http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/ocs/index.php/Munin/MC7/schedConf/program> at the University of Tromsø, Norway (21-23 November 2012). <http://socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/article/view/33> Call for papers. Press release <http://socialsciencesblog.co.uk/index.php/2012/09/23/press-release-poacher- turns-gamekeeper-issue-gold-open-access-publisher-social-sciences-directory- launched/> . Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail transmission may contain confidential or legally privileged information that is intended only for the individual or entity named in the e-mail address. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or reliance upon the contents of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail transmission in error, please reply to the sender, so that we can arrange for proper delivery, and then please delete the message from your inbox. Thank you. From: okfn-discuss-boun...@lists.okfn.org [mailto:okfn-discuss-boun...@lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Emanuil Tolev Sent: 04 October 2012 11:11 To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list Cc: Ross Mounce; Mike Taylor Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] [Open-access] Ross Mounce (Panton Fellow) on BBC about Open Access On 3 October 2012 08:27, Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk> wrote: I'd be interested in hearing more about humanities research and open access if anyone on these lists is involved in these areas. I got the impression from talking with some of those concerned afterwards that humanities academics are very drawn to *paper* copies of journals, and this thus increases the cost of publishing for them. Yes - if you want to contunue with the ways of the past it costs more money. Paper journals are irrelevant to me and my research - they are 20th century reminders of how research used to be distributed. All I need is research distributed via the internet to be read on computers, tablets, phones, and other devices and hence I feel the cost of publishing research need only be very small. I suspect the difference of opinion encountered was based around this. And the disconnection of cost from value. This is something that perhaps we should try to identify and formalize. Thus eveyrone can *read* physics in the archive. It then "has to be" published in paper. Why? (a) to provide a formal record - but a national library could do that for a fraction of the costs and (b) to give a formal label/score of approval. That's the main problem. I wonder if there aren't any further .. emotional (or sentimental, if you will) reasons for this attitude we ascribe to Humanities researchers. What if they just like reading from a paper and feel that their research has a special connection to that medium? PS Since I didn't get to mention it on air: it's Open Access Week soon! 22-28 October: http://www.openaccessweek.org/ Help celebrate & raise awareness of OA! Yes - but what actually is it? what are we meant to do? Last time I tried to contribute and got essentially zero feedback. Is it just a PR exercise for the mainstream OA community. I do not get a feeling of Openness in the same way as I do for other Open events. Looks like Document Freedom Day or similar things. As in, it's not an *event*, it's whatever the community makes it. (And "the community" = whoever knows about this week and has the knowledge and inclination to create an event in their environment.) Greetings, Emanuil
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