On Wed, 15 Dec 2004, Jan Velterop wrote:
> Maybe http://www.bio-diglib.com/home/?
Jan, thanks for your suggestion. It does appear that, of the
BMC journals, Biomedical Digital Libraries might be the most
appropriate one in which to publish a biomedically-oriented
article about advocacy for OA, such as the example that I
outlined in my previous message.
The call for papers on the home page includes a concise
outline of the primary purpose of this particular journal:
"Biomedical Digital Libraries is ready to receive
manuscripts on all aspects of digital library content and
usage in biomedical settings".
However, so far, only three articles have been published in
this new journal. One of the three is an editorial
(published 20 September 2004), about the reasons for
launching this journal. An excerpt from the editorial:
"Seizing an opportune moment to contribute to the ongoing
assessment and refinement of scholarly publishing in
biomedical education, research, and patient care, an
energetic group of librarians and faculty researchers
endeavour to launch Biomedical Digital Libraries".
The titles of the other two articles are: "Using GIS to
establish a public library consumer health collection", and,
"A knowledgebase system to enhance scientific discovery:
Telemakus".
It appears that Biomedical Digital Libraries is primarily a
"library journal". As Stevan pointed out in his Moderator's
Note, attached to my previous message:
>[sh]> "Publishing in library or publishing journals like
>[sh]> Learned Publishing (??) or Serials Review (Green) is
>[sh]> either preaching to the converted or reaching the
>[sh}> wrong constituency -- since it is only authors who
>[sh]> can self-archive and only their universities and
>[sh]> research funders who can adopt self-archiving
>[sh]> policies. So it really is an important question how
>[sh]> to reach this constituency, across all disciplines of
>[sh]> science and scholarship.
My own particular interest is in reaching research funding
agencies (and not just biomedically-oriented ones, because
NIH is already serving as an excellent role model for
funding agencies that support biomedical research). I'm
hoping that many other research funding agencies, in all
areas of research and scholarship, will become increasingly
interested in adopting self-archiving policies.
However, few fields of research seem likely, in the near
future, to have access to any discipline-oriented OA
archives that are comparable (for example) to PubMed
Central. And, I believe that funding agencies are in a
uniquely strong position to foster self-archiving, either
via institutional or disciplinary archives (when they
already exist), and/or via OA archives set up by the agency
itself (my own primary area of advocacy).
Other suggestions about how best to reach such a readership,
preferably via a peer-reviewed journal, would be much
appreciated. (It seems *very* unlikely to me that a major
general journal, such as Nature or Science, would be at all
interested in an article of this kind).
Jim Till
University of Toronto
Received on Wed Dec 15 2004 - 17:33:38 GMT