As part of a robust open access week program, Will Schweitzer, Senior Editor, Journals, participated in a University of Kansas Libraries panel discussion on “New Frontiers in Publishing” on Tuesday, October 23. Bob Schatz, the North American Sales Manager for BioMed Central also spoke on the panel. The session was moderated by Lea Currie, Head of Collection Development for the KU Libraries. Roughly 25 faculty members, librarians or students attended. A recording of the panel will be available through KU’s ScholarWorks repository.
The discussion covered a variety of topics including how SAGE and BioMed Central became involved with open access publishing, the challenges with and opportunities presented by open data and data mining, the future of open access journals, and the democratizing effect of open access on scholarship. On the latter topic, the panel discussed how individuals in developing economies utilized open access content at a greater rate than subscription walled content and questioned whether that usage would encourage greater article submissions from scholars in those economies.
Several audience members asked about potential effect of open access publishing on promotion and tenure and the perceived credibility gap between open access journals and traditional or society sponsored titles. The general consensus was that authors, particularly junior faculty members or early career individuals, need to be well informed about open access and should be supplied with quantitative data on their article’s performance, such as article downloads or social media mentions, to initiate a dialogue in their community.
The panel also discussed the importance of archiving and preserving open access content. SAGE Open participates with both CLOCKSS and Portico, two industry archiving and perpetual access solutions.
The full presentation can be seen here.
