Theoretical Economics is a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Society for Economic Theory. The inaugural issue will appear in March, though the web site already lists six papers that will appear in it. From the site:
Theoretical Economics publishes research in all areas of economic theory. The standard for acceptance is the same as that of the leading field journals in economic theory. The full content of the journal is freely accessible online without payment or password. Authors of accepted papers grant us a nonexclusive right to publish their work, but otherwise retain full control over their work. Open Access enables authors to obtain the maximum possible exposure for their work. Besides the obvious convenience to researchers and teachers, freely available papers are more likely to be linked to and referenced by websites, and as a result are much easier to find. As an experiment, enter a research topic into a search engine like Google and see how many links you obtain to papers published in traditional journals. You will find that most references are to working papers, not to published papers, because working papers are freely available. We believe that with the advent of the web, Open Access is the right way to disseminate scientific information. Existing specialty journals obtain revenues from selling subscriptions, primarily to libraries, and access to the research they publish is consequently limited. The attractive revenue stream that such subscriptions provide makes it unlikely that these journals will convert to Open Access. Thus a need exists for new refereed Open Access journals to replace existing journals.
Theoretical Economics is published by the Society for Economic Theory, a non-profit corporation devoted exclusively to the spread of scientific knowledge in economic theory. The governing body of the society is the Editorial Board of the journal. Financially the society needs only to recover the modest costs of operating a web-based journal, and is legally entitled to do no more. It will do so primarily through modest submission fees. The conversion of accepted papers into a format of professional quality will be achieved either by authors, following our guidelines and TeX style file, or by the journal, at a cost that will be passed on to authors. (For more details, see our fee schedule.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/24/2005 08:57:00 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.
