Student's initiative launches new open access journal

Just over a year ago, un undergraduate student in St Andrews put out a call for interest in starting an academic journal. The idea was to create the 'Journal of Sustainability', an open access journal which would feature distinguished research about the environment, development and sustainability in its widest sense. Since then Margot Cromwell has gathered a team of enthusiastic students from disciplines across the University to design and edit the new journal.

The University Library offered journal hosting services (using OJS software), and the students agreed that this was an ideal platform to meet their needs as it provides the structure and visibility they wanted for their venture. Our planning meetings helped tease out the usual copyright and policy issues, so that the journal had all the necessary agreements in place as content started to roll in.

As well as the support and guidance available from the Library, the new journal manager was able to meet with the student editors of Ethnographic Encounters who had experience of using the service, so even more connections across the University were made. After much hard work, the contributions have been peer reviewed, edited and published in the first issue of the Journal of Sustainability. The articles cover compelling topics, primarily on human activities in the face of climate change, with an interdisciplinary perspective that aims to encourage debate on the subject of sustainable development.

Journal of Sustainability


You can access the new journal alongside our growing suite of hosted journals at http://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/