Wednesday, January 17, 2007

New OA journal: International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies

From Juan Cole:

The URL is:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journalissues.php?issn=17512867&v=1&i=1

Registration needed but seems to be fully OA.

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Details of first issue:

The first issue of the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies is up on the Web and freely accessible. There are several good articles. The table of contents is:

The Islamist imaginary
Islam,Iraq,and the projections of empire
Authors: Raymond W. Baker

Media and lobbyist support for the US invasion of Iraq
Authors: Janice J. Terry

Beating the drum:Canadian print media and the build-up to the invasion of Iraq
Authors: Tareq Y. Ismael

The United States in Iraq:the consequences of occupation
Authors: Stephen Zunes

Toward regional war in the Middle East?
Authors: Richard Falk

Reconstructing the performance of the Iraqi economy 1950-2006: an essay with some hypotheses and many questions
Authors: Roger Owen

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

2 comments:

Heather Morrison said...

John is right, this journal is not open access. The first issue is free, but the basic model is print subscription (with free electronic access thrown in for subscribers) with pay-per-view for others.

There is no mention of author self-archiving in the authors guidelines, and the publisher (Intellect) is not listed at all on the Sherpa-Romeo Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving. This is generally not a good sign for publisher awareness about open access.

Given the political significance of the topic of the journal (Iraqi studies), it would be a very good thing if it were open access.

There are many ways of funding open access journals. It seems to me that this particular topic is an excellent example of why public funding to subsidize open access journal publishing just makes sense.

Here is a repeat of the quote John posted from the website, with additional text that explains the model a bit more fully: "From 2004 we offer free access in electronic format to users in institutions where a library subscription to the print version of a journal exists. Others may gain access to individual articles on a "pay per view" basis".

Heather Morrison said...

Another thought: this discussion is an excellent example of the value of services like the Directory of Open Access Journals. Even a question that one would think would be easy, like deciding if a journal if your own language is really open access, can be more complex than you would think. Then picture trying to figure out the really tough questions, like whether the journal really does peer review, and no one in the office is a native speaker of the language of the journal...