scholarly journals Editorial

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Lobinger ◽  
Jolanta Drzewiecka ◽  
Mike Meißner

We are pleased to announce several innovations at SComS. In July, SComS was added to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). This gives our young open access journal more visibility and connects us even better with the growing community dedicated to developing open access journals and making scientific knowledge accessible. In addition, there are technical innovations on the Submission Platform. Authors can now directly enter their ORCID ID as part of the submission process and link their papers to their unique researcher ID. In case you are not familiar with ORCID, you can find more information on https://orcid.org. Let us now turn our attention from future issues to this issue of SComS. It contains four articles in the General Section, a Thematic Section entitled “Critical perspectives on migration in discourse and communication,” and two book reviews in the Reviews and Reports Section. In addition, the Community Section contains the summary of Sina Blassnig’s dissertation, which was awarded the 2021 Dissertation Prize of the Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (SACM). On a sad occasion, the issue also contains an obituary of the communication and media scientist Michael Schanne.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Greco ◽  
Katharina Lobinger

The publication of issue 20(2) of SComS marks an important occasion, namely the 20th anniversary of our journal, which was founded at USI – Università della Svizzera italiana twenty years ago, and consequently published its first issue in early 2001. As you might know, SComS was merged with Medienwissenschaft Schweiz (a publication by the SACM – Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research) in 2007, keeping the name Studies in Communication Sciences. Seizing the occasion of this achievement, we would like to share some important information with you. First, speaking about the history of our journal, we remind you that the early issues of SComS and of Medienwissenschaft Schweiz are fully accessible on our website (section “Archives”), thanks to our collaboration with e-periodica. Second, we are happy to announce that SComS now has an online first publishing policy, meaning that articles are quickly made available online. This policy increases the pace and visibility of articles published in SComS, which is a clear advantage for both our authors and readers. Finally, if you wish to receive regular updates on news, thematic sections and articles published, we encourage you to follow SComS on Twitter (@SComS_Journal). Moving on to discuss the contents of SComS 20(2), we are pleased to announce that this issue contains a variety of topics and perspectives in our field. Alongside a General Section and a Thematic Section, it also contains a Community Section, in which we publish a summary of the PhD thesis that has won the SACM Dissertation Award 2020. Finally, this issue includes a Reviews and Reports Section that comprises two book reviews of recent publications in our field and a report on a scientific workshop held in Zurich.


Publications ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Carmen López-Vergara ◽  
Pilar Flores Asenjo ◽  
Alfonso Rosa-García

Technological development has transformed academic publication over the past two decades and new publication models, especially Open Access, have captured an important part of the publishing market, traditionally dominated by the Subscription publication model. Although Health Sciences have been one of the leading fields promoting Open Access, the perspectives of Health Science researchers on the benefits and possibilities of Open Access remain an open question. The present study sought to unveil the perspective of researchers on scientific publication decisions, in terms of the Subscription and Open Access publication model, Gold Road. With this aim, we surveyed Spanish researchers in Health Sciences. Our findings show that the value of publishing in Open Access journals increases as the experience of the researcher increases and the less she/he values the impact factor. Moreover, visibility and dissemination of the results are the main determinants of publication when choosing an Open Access journal as the first option. According to the response of the researchers, the reduction of fees and the increase in financing are important economic incentive measures to promote the Open Access publication model. It is widely accepted that the volume of Open Access publications will increase in the future.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Moustafa

Over the past few years, different changes have been introduced into the science publishing industry. However, important reforms are still required at both the content and form levels. First, the peer review process needs to be open, fair and transparent. Second, author-paid fees in open access journals need to either be removed or reconsidered toward more affordability. Third, the categorization of papers should include all types of scientific contributions that can be of higher interest to the scientific community than many mere quantitative and observable measures, or simply removed from publications. Forth, word counts and reference numbers in online open access journal should be nuanced or replaced by recommended ranges rather than to be a proxy of acceptance or rejection. Finally, all the coauthors of a manuscript should be considered corresponding authors and responsible for their mutual manuscript rather than only one or two.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Moustafa

Open and free access to scientific knowledge keeps scientists up to date with the latest achievements in their respective fields and to help set up appropriate solutions to health, environmental and technical issues. One of the efficient settings toward this purpose is the use of preprint servers- open repositories that allow authors to post their manuscripts ahead of formal peer review/publishing in traditional journals. The recognition of preprints as an essential part of science landscape are on the rise worldwide.In 2018, a European funder coalition, called Coalition S, has been formed and issued an open access plan, called Plan S, that requires authors of studies funded by the Coalition to publish their manuscripts- starting from January 2021- in open access journals or repositories that meet the guidelines of the Plan S. Many publishers and researchers welcomed the Plan S as a step forward to promote openness and free access to publicly funded research. To further enhance the open and free science movement, I'd propose a European preprint server called "European arXiv" (https://eurorxiv.eu) as a multidisciplinary and multilingual repository that will accept manuscripts (preprints and postprints) in the various European languages and beyond. The project is an individual initiative, but interested people are welcome to join.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Cristina Chircov ◽  
Monica Cartelle Gestal ◽  
Alexandru Mihai Grumezescu

We are delightfully announcing the launch of Biomedical Engineering International, a new interdisciplinary international scholarly open-access journal dedicated to publishing original and innovative research in the field of biomedical engineering. Any type of scientific paper, including reviews, original research papers, communications, or short notes, are welcome to be submitted. Any paper will further undergo the process of peer-reviewing according to the scientific standards of the journal. The scope of Biomedical Engineering International comprises all the directions of interest for the development of (pre-)clinical applications that could improve the quality of life, from tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug delivery systems, to microfluidics, neural engineering, and micro- and nanotechnology. Thus, Biomedical Engineering International aims to create an interdisciplinary communication tool for scientists in various fields, from chemists, engineers, biologists, to physicists, informaticians, and theoreticians. For this, the publication is done under the policy of Platinum Open Access, meaning that articles are free for readers and no article processing charges are demanded from authors, nor from their institutions. The publication charges for articles in Biomedical Engineering International are covered by AMG Transcend Association, Romania. Through this, Biomedical Engineering International addresses equality in academic publishing, by making the process available to both researchers and readers. Additionally, authors benefit from increased visibility of their research and thus, an increase of citations and higher influence in the academic world. There are no restrictions on the total length of the papers as the journal encourages the publication of detailed experimental and theoretical research. In this regard, Biomedical Engineering International paves the way to completely free academic publishing services in the biomedical engineering research field. In this manner, we gladly invite you to submit your papers in the field of biomedical engineering to be considered for publication in Biomedical Engineering International and we are looking forward to collaborating with you!


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 227-239
Author(s):  
Christian Verger ◽  
Max Dratwa ◽  
Pierre-Yves Durand ◽  
Jacques Chanliau ◽  
Eric Goffin ◽  
...  

The Bulletin de la dialyse à Domicile (Home Dialysis Bulletin) is a quaterly open access journal, created in June 2018. It adheres to international standards of ethics and good practices in medical publishing; it is indexed in the directory of open access journals (doaj.org). The aim of this work was, by means of an anonymous online survey, to assess its appreciation among French-speaking nephrologists and healthcare teams. The analysis of the responses to the survey highlighted a high degree of appreciation by readers, the importance of using their native language which abrogates language barriers to their easy access to medical or nursing information, the need for practical articles but also recommendations, the sharing of clinical cases. Readers believe that the Bulletin de la Dialyse à Domicile provides them with a source of information to which they have little or no access elsewhere. It responds to a clearly expressed need for all those who take care of patients treated by home dialysis, but remains closely linked to English speakers because its the bi-lingual online publication which give the opportunity to accept foreign  submissions and share experience between countries.


Biotechnology ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1531-1540
Author(s):  
Rekha Pareek ◽  
Sudhir Kumar

Bioinformatics is rapidly growing, interdisciplinary field of science, where methods from information technology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics are used to solve problems of biological science. To access latest scholarly articles in such an important branch one cannot deny the importance of open access journals. In this chapter an attempt has been made to access the current status of open access journals of bioinformatics which are covered by Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) on various parameters like country and language of publication, their currency, impact factor, article processing charges, copyright licensing model they are using, platform for hosting and their coverage in abstracting/indexing databases.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsu-Jui Ma ◽  
Gwo-Guang Lee

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe a bibliometric study of journal articles in Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) related to open access journals. Publication trends from 1993 to 2016, core journals, prolific authors and article citation frequencies were examined to provide librarians and scholars with a basic reference of relevant resources. Design/methodology/approach Among articles published in journals which have been listed in SSCI during 1993-2016, titles were searched for the term “open access journal”. The data were evaluated in response to five research questions concerning topics including publication trends from 1993 to 2016, core journals, prolific authors and article citation frequencies. Findings In total, 115 articles on open access journals were authored by 215 individuals from 1993 to 2016. The 115 articles analyzed were cited 842 times in 57 journals. Originality/value This paper describes a bibliometric study on open access journal publication, which has rarely been performed within the specific context of document supply issues. It provides a foundation for further research on titles as well as resources for librarians and scholars.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Boyle

The open access journal is becoming a common place to publish compared to the traditional paper based journal as the work is readily available to the research and general community.  The academic community place a lot of emphasis on the quality and impact factor of journals.  There are numerous problems with this stance especially for academic paramedics and the general out-of-hospital healthcare provider.  Some in the academic community look upon open access journals as not being “proper” or “lacking in quality”. In the majority of instances this is not the case as the open access journals have comparable international editorial boards who oversee the manuscript handling processes.


Author(s):  
Emilie Barthet ◽  
Jean-Luc De Ochandiano ◽  
Irina S. Boldyreva

Located in Lyon, France, the Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University is home to 30 000 students in law, management and humanities, around 600 academic staff and 18 research units. A dedicated research support team was implemented within the University library in 2015, to promote open access to their results. In 2017, answering to requests expressed by researchers to be helped in their online publishing, the library launched an in-house incubator for open access journals in social sciences and humanities. Staff from the research units was offered an open access standard-compliant publishing platform, technical and editorial assistance, training for publications, and program to have the backlog of issues addressed.The journal incubator raison d’être is to allow the University’s research to be available on an open access basis, to reinforce good open access journal publishing practices among research units and to improve the overall visibility of the research produced by Jean Moulin Lyon 3 researchers. The project quickly gathered momentum: two other higher educational institutions have approached the library to see if they could publish on the platform, thus expanding its role beyond the limits of its parent institution. The project played an instrumental role in forming, in late 2018, a network of French incubators and publishing platforms in social sciences and humanities. Named REPÈRES, the network promotes sharing good practices among public-funded open access publishers. The Jean Moulin Lyon 3 library project is a contribution to bibliodiversity since it supports an open access model and the use of vernacular languages (French in the case at hand). The project also reinforces the intertwining of academic and library staff for the common goal of scientific publishing. Thus, the library becomes a full participant of the scientific process.


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