Established journal seeking advice on Open Source distribution

Hi all,

Brand new member here, we’ve got our DOI but have not registered any content yet. We’ve only ever sold our journal in hard copy through an online publisher in the field, but now feel ready with 22 issues (150 articles approximately) under our belts to brave the choppy waters of the online publishing world.

We contacted Wiley who were only interested in open-source journals with “cascade publishing” potential. T&F asked us to fill in a publishing partnership questionnaire and I fear another rejection if we apply without knowing the criteria or metrics used by them. We haven’t indexed any journal issues or articles with SCOPUS yet but we know that might need to be done first and are prepared to do what is necessary.

Hope someone can help or point me in the right direction for advice on the questions below -

  1. Should we just publish ourselves on our website and charge per article or should we go with a big online publishing house (if they’ll have us)?
  2. Do we need to be open source as a small journal or would an online publisher/distributor ever be interested in selling articles from our journal?
  3. What can we do to improve our chances (e.g. have our journal issues indexed with SCOPUS) of getting the online publisher/distributor to be interested?

Much appreciated for any assistance,
Emmet

Hi Emmet,

First of all welcome to the Crossref Community Forum!

As your question isn’t about Crossref specifically, I think there are probably members of our community much better placed to answer your questions and provide advice than the Crossref staff on this one.

Any of our publisher community members care to share their experiences or recommendations for Emmet?

Thanks,

Vanessa

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Thanks so much Vanessa,
I’d really appreciate any member’s expertise and guidance on this.
Emmet

Hi Emmet,

Congratulation for your new journey on online journal :smiley: . I am running University Publishers and some small publisher myself. I will try to answer your question.

Should we just publish ourselves on our website and charge per article or should we go with a big online publishing house (if they’ll have us)?

  1. Partnering with big publishing house sure have much benefits. You can shortcut your “online-journal learning” journey, since they will provide everything for you. However, i am sure is not a cheap price. If you lack of fund, is better you install a free online journal platform like Open Journal System and running the platform by yourself. But, you will need a massive learn on how all things worked (DOI, Indexing, OJS, OAI, XML, etc).

Do we need to be open source as a small journal or would an online publisher/distributor ever be interested in selling articles from our journal?

  1. Its your choice to make. However, selling an article (closed access) now days its not wise to do. Except you have very good articles there to sell (or your already have well known journal on scientific community). Since, you need your journal having more impact, and closed access hinder it. Sell the hard copy, and then make free for all articles or some of it, i think is best choice for you.

What can we do to improve our chances (e.g. have our journal issues indexed with SCOPUS) of getting the online publisher/distributor to be interested?

  1. For Scopus you can see their requirement in here https://0-www-elsevier-com.library.alliant.edu/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works/content/content-policy-and-selection As you can see dIversity (author-editor) and Impact (citation-journal standing) is a main ingredients for scopus inclusion. Thus, you need to make sure your journal meet their criteria.

Good luck

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Thanks so much for getting back to me Mochammad,

I think we need to partner and be open access. Great idea to sell the hard copy of the journal and make the digital articles open access. I am hoping a publishing partner will (for a fee) get us indexed with Ebsco, SCOPUS etc.
I was looking at Emerald Publishing - Publish open access | Emerald Publishing
Has anyone here ever partnered with them and can recommend them?

Thanks again,
Emmet

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