Open Journal Promotion?
Back in Maynooth after my weekend in Cardiff, I was up early this morning to prepare today’s teaching and related matters and I’m now pretty exhausted so I thought I’d just do a quick update about my pet project The Open Journal of Astrophysics.
I’ve been regularly boring all my readers with a stream of stuff about the Open Journal of Astrophysics, but if it’s all new to you, try reading the short post about the background to the Open Journal project that you can find here.
Since the re-launch of the journal last month we’ve had a reasonable number of papers submitted. I’m glad there wasn’t a huge influx, actually, because the Editorial Board is as yet unfamiliar with the system and require a manageable training set. The papers we have received are working their way through the peer-review system and we’ll see what transpires.
Obviously we’re hoping to increase the number of submissions with time (in a manageable way). As it happens, I have some (modest) funds available to promote the OJA as I think quite a large number of members of the astrophysics community haven’t heard of it. This also makes it a little difficult to enlist referees.
So here I have a small request. Do any of you have any ideas for promoting The Open Journal of Astrophysics? We could advertise directly in journals of course, but I’m wondering if anyone out there in the interwebs has any more imaginative ideas? If you do please let me know through the comments box below..
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In the Dark 
November 20, 2018 at 7:53 pm
Poster papers at conferences and meetings? A table/stall at meetings? Advertisements in research-community magazines such as A&G, The Observatory and equivalents.
November 21, 2018 at 3:32 pm
No, The Observatory normally does not carry advertisements, but I think I can remember seeing some on the inside front cover at times in the past.
Nice though A&G is, I too regret the passing of QJRAS.
November 21, 2018 at 3:38 pm
Maybe I could put a message on the side of a bus and drive it around the country….
November 21, 2018 at 4:48 pm
Make sure the bus is red.
November 21, 2018 at 2:26 pm
Not boring at all – this is a very fine pioneering project.
I suggest that the editorial board be asked to emailshot every astrophysicist whom they know personally (so not spam) with details of OJA, and a request that recipients of the email do the same (and so on…) Such an email should point out how badly the research community is presently being ripped off by academic journal publishers; how the coming of the internet totally outdates one of the two functions of journals – dissemination – and that OJA is a pioneering effort to provide online the second function – quality control – so as to overcome the ripoff. Finish by asking who believes that paper journals will exist in 100 years time and appeal for support. I am suggesting direct contact because learned societies have a conflict of interest since they are also publishers.
The two barriers to acceptance are (1) reputation and (2) concerns over archiving. There are no shortcuts to gaining a reputation. It is done by hard work and wisdom, and I wish OJA every success. Re (2), I suspect that an underlying concern of many researchers, even if it is not often stated, is that if OJA’s centralised website ceases to exist, for any reason whatsoever, then published papers simply vanish, whereas paper journals are distributed in multiple copies across libraries. This concern can be overcome via distributed online storage. I am unsure of the exact details but I recall that when Napster was forced offline illicit downloads of music were facilitated by multiple voluntary storage of bits of tracks by many persons. The blockchain is a further example of distributed storage. Perhaps OJA could set up a similar scheme to overcome this concern?
November 21, 2018 at 3:22 pm
My comments about Napster and the blockchain were for Peter, not to be put in the email I am proposing. Was that not obvious?
Of course journals have websites, but content is either behind a paywall or has had heavy page charges levied – facts of which you must surely be aware. Just about all of your criticisms are easily dealt with by writing the email appropriately, and I have confidence that that would be done by OJA.
November 21, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Rather than that, if I were Peter I would send out a draft to selected individuals for comment.
November 21, 2018 at 6:13 pm
MNRAS is no longer going to be free if the page length is > 20 pages (from what I understand). You could contact the APS and AAS presidents and ask them to spread the word about this journal as well as to spokespersons/PIs of major astrophysical surveys/collaborations and point out that this is an apt place for technical papers
November 23, 2018 at 5:41 am
Philip: Check out
https://ras.ac.uk/journals/journal-news/policy-update-excess-page-charge-mnras-papers-exceeding-20-pages
November 21, 2018 at 6:17 pm
You can also give a talk about this journal at APS or AAS meeting.(and also at RAS meeting and similar ones). I know AAS has a parallel session on such meta-topics (there was one on ADS in the last one I attended)
November 26, 2018 at 3:01 pm
Peter or anyone else. Do you know if Letters in High energy Physics (http://journals.andromedapublisher.com/index.php/LHEP/about/submissions) is also something like open journal of astrophysics?