Open Peer Review journals

Courtesy of XML Daily News Link, a couple of related links that may be
of interest to some on this list.

"Now that publications are increasingly being enriched with databases
and audio-visual elements, the need for non-proprietary review systems
– that is, peer review systems that do not require the assignment of
copyright to the organiser of the peer review i.e. the publisher - is
becoming ever-more pressing. Although there is a steadily growing
number of peer-reviewed Open Access journals [1] and an active Open
Access Scholarly Publishers Association [2], the supply fails to keep
pace with the demand. More and more research funders require open
access to the publications that result from research they have
financed. Recently the European Commission conducted a pilot
initiative on open access to peer-reviewed articles in FP7 [3], its
Seventh Research Framework Programme, that may result in 100,000
reviewed articles. In so far as authors cannot all publish in Open
Access journals, the EC and, for that matter, other Open
Access-mandating funders impose unfair conditions on authors.

"With a shift from proprietary to non-proprietary systems of peer
review, initial experience has now been garnered from SCOAP [4] and
the Springer experiments [5] at UKB, MPG, Göttingen University and,
lately, California University [6]). This conversion can be speeded up
if disciplinary communities, universities, and research funders
actively enter the market of the peer review organisers by calling for
tenders and inviting publishers to submit proposals for a
non-proprietary design of the peer review process. Given the current
situation – with the American legislature and the European Commission
having clearly taken a stand in favour of Open Access – one can expect
that such tenders will certainly produce interesting proposals. The
time is ripe!

"This article examines the idea of the European Commission putting out
such a tender."

.

"The 'Open Archives Metadata Set' describes a collection of metadata
elements used in the Santa Fe Convention. The Santa Fe Convention
[Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 21-22, 1999], adapted for use by the
Open Archives Initiative "presents a technical and organizational
framework designed to facilitate the discovery of content stored in
distributed e-print archives. It makes easy-to-implement technical
recommendations for archives that will allow data from e-print
archives to become widely available via its inclusion in a variety of
end-user services such as search engines, recommendation services and
systems for interlinking documents. The Open Archives Initiative aims
to support archives, both those focused on e-prints (e.g., preprints
and reprints, often connected with journals and conferences) and those
representing a wide variety of other content types (e.g., theses and
dissertations, Web log files, and educational resources). The emphasis
has been on allowing harvesting of metadata that describes diverse
"records" of content, stored in managed repositories. As of June 2000,
there were six (6) conforming archives with content available for
harvesting."

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Best regards,

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. (Marbux)