[GOAL] Re: Title not found: room for improvement in maintaining access to content when journals cease

[Dana Roth]

As an aside, here is the Wikipedia 'background' for Libertas Academica

Libertas Academica, referred to as "LA", is a publisher of open access ("OA") scientific, technical and medical journals. It is privately funded and was founded specifically to publish OA journals. It was established in late 2004 with the launch of two journals, Evolutionary Bioinformatics and Cancer Informatics. Additional journals have been published since. It has been included on a list of "predatory" open access publishers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beall%27s_List>.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertas_Academica#cite_note-1> In 2005, a single Cancer Informatics Editorial Board member, whose paper was under review at the time, proposed an open 'buddy review' system in which authors would submit a paper pre-reviewed by peers selected by the authors. A significant proportion of the editorial board of one of LA's journals, Cancer Informatics, led by Founding Editor-in-Chief James Lyons-Weiler, PhD of the University of Pittsburgh, threatened to resign if the publisher changed its peer-review systems to the "buddy review" system, which they perceived as corrupt. The publisher kept using its original industry standard review system, in place since the founding of the first two journals. The publisher's peer review system was, and is based on the standard, 'industry-standard' blind review process.[citation needed<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>] In 2013, a sham study<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Peer_Review%3F> reporting that a compound isolated from lichen can kill cancer cells was submitted to one of the journals published by LA for peer review. After LA used its objective peer review system, the sham study was correctly rejected for publication.[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertas_Academica#cite_note-2>

Dana L. Roth
Caltech 1-32
1200 E. California Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91125
626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540
dzrlib at library.caltech.edu<mailto:dzrlib at library.caltech.edu>
http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 12:07 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Title not found: room for improvement in maintaining access to content when journals cease


Some open access journal publishers and services may not have much experience in the complexities of keeping track of journals and articles as journals change over time. The purpose of this post is to highlight the loss of ready access that occurs when a journal ceases publication and is removed from DOAJ, and sometimes from the publisher's website as well. It is understandable that DOAJ wishes to focus on and encourage active open access journals, however removing content when journals cease is a disservice to readers and authors alike.

Recommendations

Authors: always post a copy of your article in an open access archive, even if you have published in an open access journal.

Open access journal publishers: if a title ceases to exist, do not remove the title from your website (unless it had no articles at all). If the journal has changed title, add a link to help the reader make the connection. If the title has ceased, include a note to that effect.

DOAJ: indicate that journals have ceased rather than removing them from DOAJ. Include a field to indicate whether journals are active or not. There is an "end date" in DOAJ which seems like a good candidate to use for that purpose.

Examples of title not found

These titles were on the Libertas Academica website in 2014, but have disappeared as of May 2015:

  *   Cell Biology Insights
  *   Clinical Medical Insights: Dermatology
  *   Immunotherapy Insights
  *   Particle Physics Insights
This message is the entire content of this blogpost on the Sustaining the Knowledge Commons blog:
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/15/title-not-found-room-for-improvement-in-maintaining-access-to-articles-when-journals-disappear/

best,

--
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
Desmarais 111-02
613-562-5800 ext. 7634
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons: Open Access Scholarship
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20150515/b636090d/attachment-0001.html