EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative recently published 7 things you should know about...Open Journals This is a "must read" for faculty, resarchers, students, and staff interested in an online peer-reviewed journal tool AND an open access model that makes the entire workflow transparent.
According to the article:
"Open journaling tools manage the process of publishing peer-reviewed journals online. They enable users to publish academic journals more easily and much less expensively than traditional methods. They also allow authors to track their submissions through the review process, as well as to access reviewer comments and revise and resubmit articles, which creates a sense of openness and transparency uncommon in traditional peer-reviewed publications. "
One of the most popular online open journal applications is * Open Journal Systems which publishes "more than 800 journals around the world. This tool was developed by the Public Knowledge Project.
For a sample list of journals using OJS http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs-journals. One of the journals, the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal is "dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed (and faculty-reviewed) articles written by undergraduates."
Another open source journal tool discussed in the article is Digital Publishing System (DPubS) - "a project from the Cornell University Library and Penn State University Libraries and Press.
Other tools include HyperJournal and OpenACS (Open Architecture Community System.
These applications lower the threshold for creating a journal, but the article suggests that "the journal format could be used to provide access to content collections that otherwise would not strictly be considered a journal."
With other tools such as wikis and blogs available, it will be interesting to see how faculty and students choose among the tools for various kinds of publishing.
