Draft Mission Statement

Listed below is a draft mission statement for the organization. This is just to get the discussion started. Please add your thoughts to the discussion topic on the mission statement.

Education and Mentorship – Provide a source of information and support for individuals or groups of individuals interested in forming a new OA journal.

Creating a successful journal takes knowledge and skills from a variety of fields most scholars do not possess. Many times the developers of new journals do not understand the ramifications of starting a new journal and effort required to ensure that it is successful. The net result of this is that many new journals quickly fail tarnishing the reputation of gold OA and doing a disservice to the authors that had entrusted their manuscripts to the journal. We feel that a professional organization that could provide training and mentorship to developers prior to launching a new journal would help ensure the success of their journals.

Certification and Standard Setting – Develop and maintain a set of ethical standards and best practices for designing and operating OA journals. Implement a system for certifying member journals as meeting these standards.

There is still a pervasive belief that OA journals lack the quality and prestige of traditional fee for access journals. The quality of OA journals also varies widely as do fee for access journals. While their transgressions have been relatively minor compared to some fee for access publishers, some OA publishers have not adhered to reasonable ethical standards. In addition, a small minority of publishes appear to be more interested in making money from author publication fees than developing quality scholarly publications.

Developing a set of ethical standards and best practices as well a procedure for certifying that journals have met these standards and practices can significantly enhance the reputation of OA journals. Credentialing could provide a mechanism for scholars to ensure that they have chosen a journal that adheres to appropriate ethical standards and best practices in its operation. This program would be closely tied to the education, mentoring and support functions of the organization to facilitate journals meeting the standards set by the organization.

Coordinating the Purchase of Services to Achieve Economies of Scale – Organize a consortium of journals that can join together to purchase services such as copyediting and XML conversion to reduce costs through economies of scale.

Although electronic dissemination and web-based journal management can reduce the costs of operating an OA journal, it still takes significant resources and specialized technical services to publish professional quality journal. By banding together OA journals could potentially reduce effort and costs of purchasing technical services through economies of scale. (Note: Raym Crow has proposed this concept through SPARC.)

Advocacy – Provide a forum for promoting gold OA and educating the public concerning the benefits of OA journals.

There are many organizations promoting OA. Most promote both green and gold OA. While in our view both are valuable mechanisms for achieving open access to research and scholarship, the issues related to green and gold OA are quite different. We feel it would be useful to have an organization that specifically focuses on promoting and educating the public and elected officials about gold OA.

Support and Fund Innovation in Electronic Open Access Publication – Provide a mechanism for small grant funding, research dissemination and other means of facilitating the development of electronic open access publishing.

The development of the World Wide Web (WWW) which made electronic publication and OA distribution feasible is only approximately 15 year old. We have much to lean on how best to use this media for dissemination of research and scholarship. This organization could serve an important role in research, development and dissemination of best practices for OA publication.