Open Access News

Minnesota-based Global Commerce & Communication, Inc. (GCCI) announced today the launch of a one-stop efficient forum for publishing research and creative work from all disciplines.

SJI’s open access electronic journals are available free of charge to over 800 million Internet users from around the world. Unlike other online journals SJI does not limit access through registration or subscription....

According to several surveys, a large majority of authors and researchers cite slow review process and publication delays in the current system as a major obstacle to their publishing objectives. Many have also expressed concerns about the fairness and integrity of the peer review process in traditional scholarly publishing. Some scholars have argued that there is a need to free the publication process for broader and fairer access. Scientific Journals International (SJI) is the first global initiative that aspires to accomplish this objective....

All traditional journals have very rigid stylistic or procedural policies that unduly create artificial barriers and in effect retard innovation and creativity,” said SJI spokesperson Neil Armand. Scientific Journals International (SJI) will deliberately maintain minimal procedural and stylistic rules, and will accept papers that follow any style manual such as APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. A fair peer-reviewed evaluation system will be used to select papers for publication. SJI will maintain a rapid electronic submission, review and publication process.

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Scientific Journals International (SJI) publishes articles individually as soon as they are accepted and edited. We do not wait until all required articles are ready for an entire issue. This time saving can be very helpful to authors, particularly in fast-moving subjects such as the sciences, where priority of publication is extremely important. Additionally, we do not set the same limitations on the length of the article as other traditional and online journals do....

Our capability for perpetual future accessibility and preservation is also extremely valuable to both authors and readers. All accepted and published articles remain in our databases and archives in perpetuity for worldwide exposure and visibility. Each electronic article is encoded with html meta-tags which allow for more sophisticated searching techniques. The information which is contained in an article can be intelligently structured for bibliographic access.

Comment. I wish SJI every success and have just one suggestion. SJI sometimes speaks of itself as a publisher of journals (plural) and sometimes of one multi-disciplinary journal (singular). Though confusing, both locutions seem justified: the current issue (singular) is divided into many disciplinary sections, each named "Journal of..." If SJI picked one of these ways of speaking and stuck to it, it would minimize confusion and help potential authors and readers understand what it is doing.