The Journal of Maps is a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal from the Earth Sciences and Geography faculty at Kingston University. The first issue appeared on January 5. Although access to full-text articles and maps is free of charge, it does require registration, which will block crawlers and other research tools. Excerpt from Mike Smith's editorial in the inaugural issue: 'JoM emerged out of the desire for myself and colleagues at the Kingston Centre for GIS to publish bespoke maps. As an applied research group we collect (and map) spatial data for a variety of geographic disciplines, however the publication of such material is diącult; a cursory survey of geography-related journals showed that map publication was uncommon and usually incurred high page costs. Maps are central to the process of understanding within spatially aware disciplines, through the use of maps to analyse, store and present spatial information. The lack of map publication is an undesirable effect of the modern publication process and weakens the value of research findings. JoM was established to redress the imbalance in map publication; the high page costs of printed maps is unavodiable and therefore JoM was only viable as an e-journal. This constraint presented the opportunity for us to "self-publish", thereby by-passing the whole commerical publication process. It was at this stage that we decided JoM should be open-access, with a nominal author fee to cover running costs....JoM wishes to actively contribute to the debate on map data and copyright, with a view to lessening the restrictions on map publication.' (Thanks to UKSG Serials-eNews.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/28/2005 10:26:00 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.
