Publishing the Open Access Way

As part of RMIT’s sessions in Open Access week I toddled down to “Publishing the Open Access Way: The Change in Business Thinking Towards Open Access” and a slightly small crowd… I’m a little behind with blog posts, so this will again, be a little bit of a collection of items with some opinions and thoughts.

The speakers and talks were

Dr Adrian Danks - Senses of cinema
A quarterly academic journal around cinema culture and commentary. To me it’s approach seemed fairly conventional. Their open nature means not Peer reviewed. Their 4th largest audience is Australia, which seems to be a constant, many Australian creative organisations have to be successful overseas to make it at home. Dependent on funding bodies, how does this affect the open nature? Is it any better than an advertiser really?

Philip Dearman - Communication, Politics & Culture
An open access journal, I think the title pretty much tells you what the content is. Seems like some publications just become free because they have no other options or are forced to. Again, the journal is backed by Academia anyway, so it doesn’t have quite the same restraints others may have.

Debbie Dickinson - The conversation
The Conversation is fairly well known, again with some academic backing, but seemingly looking into wider sustainable sources of funding and life. Some of the Conversations interesting features and approaches are republishing their content, sharing is positively encouraged leading to strong worldwide access.