The visit of my former PhD student Mateja Gosenca to Maynooth last year reminded me that she was co-author of the very first paper published by the Open Journal of Astrophysics. The date of publication for that paper was 8th February 2016, i.e. excactly10 years ago today.
Here is the overlay:
In those days OJAp was very much an experiment, and we used a protoptype platform which I had paid a developer to set up but it never really progressed beyond a “beta” version owing to stability and other issues. I was a Head of School at Sussex then and had very little time to work on the project and it stalled. I came to Maynooth in late 2017 and discussed the idea of OJAp with staff at the Library who were enthusiastic about it. We abandoned the prototype and switched to the Scholastica platform, imported the papers we had previously published into the new site and restarted. It was slow going at first and then we had the Covid-19 lockdown tand I had to conted with a workload that went through the roof. Several times I thought it was never going to take off and wondered about closing it to new submissions. With a bit of pig-headed obstinacy and a refusal to look facts in the face, however, we carried on.
The journal has grown steadily since the end of the pandemuic: from just 17 papers in 2022, 50 in 2023, 120 in 2024, to 213 last year (including our first Supplement). I expect we’ll publish over 250 this year. I think a large part of the growth has been due to the decision of the Royal Astronomical Society to adopt a pay-to-publish model. I expected it to take a while to establish a reputation, but perhaps not as long as it did. We’re still quite small compared to other journals, but I’m pleased with the progress. I think in the long run the slow start helped, as it gave us more time to iron out various issues and recruit more editors.
This brings me to the fact that I will be retiring in a couple of years, if not sooner, and someone else will have to take over as Editor-in-Chief when that happens. At present, OJAp is published by Maynooth Academic Publishing and it’s not obvious that arrangement can continue when I am no longer employed at Maynooth. It would not be technically difficult to transfer everything to a new owner, but the handover would have to be planned to avoid disruption.
P.S. As I mentioned last month, we are always on the lookout for new Editors. Please contact me if you’re interesed!
In the Dark 