New Tools Explore Journal Publishing Policies

Two new tools make finding key information about journals easier, providing authors with support for decisions about where to publish and offering information about what they can do with their work once they publish. Both tools were announced this month and are open for testing and comment.

Journal Info

The first tool, Journal Info, includes access, cost, and quality information for 18,000 journals. Journal Info is intended to support researchers in their choice of journal for publication. It offers access, cost, and quality information, and also indicates if there is an open access alternative to a given title.

Some of the data points offered for each journal are:

Allowance of self-archiving [by author] of reviewed manuscript
Subscription price per article and per citation
Profit or not-for-profit status
Publication fees
Quality measures, including where the journal is indexed, the ISI Impact Factor, and a new impact factor measure called the Journal eigenfactor, which is sponsored by the Bergstrom lab in the University of Washington’s Biology Department.

Journal Info was created by Lund University Libraries (with financial support from the National Library of Sweden). Lund also created the Directory of Open Access Journals, a resource that identifies scientific and scholarly journals that make their content accessible to readers without legal or subscription barriers.

HHMI Journal Publishing Policy Database

The second tool was built by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to support their authors in meeting the terms of the new HHMI open access mandate. This tool was developed by HHMI “as a convenience to HHMI scientists and their collaborators around the world” and offers “a searchable resource with information about the policies and author responsibilities for 50 high-impact journals,” principally in biomedicine.

Some of the data points offered for each title are: