Emerging platforms
for
open access publication
PeerJ and PeerJ PrePrints
What is PeerJ?
- Medical & biological sciences journal
- Associated with preprint server (PeerJ PrePrints)
- Open Access (CC-BY) with no embargoes
- Author pays one-time membership
- Membership includes yearly publication(s)
Business Model
- Each author listed must be a member
- Three tiers:
- Basic (once per year for life)
- Enhanced (twice per year for life)
- Investigator (Unlimited)
- Institutions can subscribe, allowing their faculty free or discounted publishing
- Membership requires one review/comment per year
- Avg peer-review article costs $5,333
- PLoS ONE was heralded for low cost of $1,350 per article
Review Process
- Single-blind review (reviewers know authors)
- Expected acceptance rate of ~70% (based on similar journals)
- Judges on scientific and methodological soundness only
- Not lack of novelty, interest, or impact
- Must be a research paper
- Median days to first decision: 24
Open review and commenting
-
Encourages open peer review
- Personal profile page reflects that they performed review
- Authors given option to reproduce peer review history
- Articles are open for comment
- Voting on questions/answers based on StackOverflow model
Post-publication
- PeerJ is widely indexed
- Currently awaiting impact factor (must be 2 yrs old)
- PeerJ articles are published in HTML, JSON, XML, PDF
- PeerJ PrePrint are basic PDF; not professionally typeset
Peerj after one year
According to co-founder Peter Binfield,
- 91% of authors had an "above average" publishing experience
- 42% rated it "one of the best I have ever had"
Source: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/peerjs-99-open-access-model-one-year-on/2011960.article
Current Stats:
- 32 institutions with researcher plans
- 834 academic editors
- 2,198 peer-reviewed & preprint authors
Positive Aspects
- Cheap
- Modern web linking and browsing
- Alternative Metrics built in
Negative Aspects
- Stable business model (?)
- Potential drawbacks of charging for authorship rights
Knowledge Unlatched
- Libraries around the world share a title fee
- Focus is on humanities and social science monographs
- Title fee is paid to publisher to make edition open access
- CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-ND license
- Libraries pledge a capped amount, if enough pledge, they share the fee
- During the pilot, more than 200 libraries pledged and unlatched 28 titles
unglue.it
- Crowdfunding to make CC ebooks
- Three types of campaign
- Pledge - Pledge support, unglued when goal is met
- Buy - Author sells copies until goal is met
- Thanks - Author produces OA copy, readers donate
- Launched in May, 2012
- Seven titles have been 'Unglued'