Hepeng Jia, China gives national science journals a financial boost, SciDev.Net, September 17, 2004. Excerpts: "China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is to fund a number of the country's scientific journals in a bid to transform them into world-class research publications. Sun Zhengqi, the MOST official responsible for managing science publication, says the decision was made because the low international profile of most Chinese journals fails to reflect the country's growing world status....China currently has nearly 4500 scientific journals – about half the national total of magazine titles. In 2003, some 400 million copies of these journals were printed. Despite these phenomenal figures, many of China's science publications are low-quality, and they can take a long time to review and publish papers. As a result, some cannot keep up with the latest national developments in their fields....Many Chinese journals are also constrained by a lack of funds, poor circulation and low advertising revenues." (PS: If the government has already decided that increasing the stature, visibility, and circulation of Chinese journals is a priority for public funds, then it should either help the journals convert to OA or launch a network of OA, OAI-compliant institutional repositories to archive their articles.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/23/2004 08:53:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
