Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
gold OA the publisher makes the entire e-journal available on the
internet free of charge - finding revenue streams from sources other
than library subscriptions (e.g. library membership fees or payments
from authors). In green OA an article is published in a conventional,
subscription-based journal, but the author subsequently makes it
available online, via either personal or institutional web pages or in a
repository.
The growth of repositories is a worldwide phenomenon. Many
academic institutions around the globe now have their own institutional
repositories (IR), which contain the research output of their scholars and
researchers, including journal articles, book chapters, theses and
research reports. Providing that the IR complies with the Open
Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), the
publications can be discovered by anyone using a generic web search
engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo!). In many institutions it is the
responsibility of the library to manage and populate the IR, which
means that generally the library bears the cost of the 'publishing'
activity - particularly in terms of staff costs. There are also a number of
international discipline-based repositories, the best known being arXiv
1
for physics and PubMed Central
2
for biomedical sciences.
If OA publishing continues to grow, the impact on publishers and
libraries will be considerable. There could come a time when libraries
decide to cancel journal subscriptions because a significant proportion
of articles published are freely available online. Indeed, research by
Norris, Oppenheim and Rowland (2008) shows that in some subject
disciplines well over 50% of all published papers
are
already freely
available. But whether it is traditional publishers or librarians via their
IR who publish materials, there is still a cost associated with the
publishing and someone will need to foot the bill.
The future of the journal
Having examined some of the issues surrounding the publishing and
provision of journals in the digital environment, it is perhaps time to
ask whether the journal, as we know it, is fit for purpose. Already it is
apparent that there is no longer a necessity for every library in the UK
to retain printed back-files of journals and older topics. The UK
Research Reserve Project is working on a national UK store, based in
