This morning I learned from my former Duke colleague, Digital Strategist Paolo Mangiafico (@paoloman) that the Duke Libraries and the editors of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies have taken that journal open-access, using the Open Journal Systems software. A couple of hours later, along came notice from current colleague Andy Carter (@cartandy) that the first open-access issue of the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement is live. This is a journal (although obviously not one about Classics!) hosted by the UGA Library, also using Open Journal Systems.
I first learned about OJS in a session on open-access journals at THATCamp SE in Atlanta in March. It’s great to see scholarly journals, especially a fairly prominent journal in Classics, moving to open-access in general, and especially heartening for me to see the fruitful collaborations between university libraries and the editors of scholarly journals on campus. At Duke, the close relationship between Classics and the Libraries is longstanding (all those papyri!). A press release on the new open-access journals at Duke closes with a heartening quote from Joshua D. Sosin:
The Duke Libraries and the Department of Classical Studies have long collaborated to provide free, web-based access to some of the University’s most ancient materials. We are thrilled to be able to extend that partnership to scholarly research. Socrates famously did not accept fees; this piece of critical infrastructure allows us to do the same!
Do you work on a scholarly journal? If you’re thinking at all about open-access journal publishing, do talk to your university library – they may be the partner who can make it work.
Becoming a Classics Librarian 