Collabra is now open for submissions

Copyright Collabra 2015

The open access journal Collabra is now open for submissions. Collabra is a fully open access mega-journal covering three main fields of study: Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Life and Biomedical Sciences, and Social and Behavioural Sciences. We have blogged about Collabra previously, so if you are interested in finding out more check out our previous post here.

Here's a quick summary of Collabra:

• It has a relatively low APC (Article Processing Charge) of $875 USD
• Collabra gives reviewers the option of receiving payment for their reviews
• Collabra can waive the APC charge for those unable to pay
• It offers optional open peer-review
• Use of article-level metrics to track downloads, pageviews, and social-media sharing
• Post-publication commenting on articles. 

Collabra has partnered with the platform provider Ubiquity Press - an open access publisher who provide a variety of journal hosting services (as well as book publishing). By entering into such a partnership, journals can share infrastructure which can enable greater efficiency and sustainability.

We are also delighted to report that University of St Andrews academic Akira O'Connor from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience has joined the Social and Behavioural Sciences editorial team at Collabra.

To submit an article to Collabra or to find out more visit the website.

Open Access in Scottish Universities

During March 2014 our colleagues in University of Edinburgh Library produced a video of interviews with well-regarded, pro-Open Access academics from a range of universities in Scotland. It is hoped the interviews will appeal to both young and more experienced researchers in medicine, sciences and the arts and humanities with the intention of making the them relevant to those working in Scottish HEIs and to be made widely available and of use to repository managers and librarians working elsewhere in the spirit of Open Access.

The project was run under the auspices of the Open Access Toolkit for Scotland (OATS), an extension of the JISC-funded ERIS (Enhancing Repository Infrastructure in Scotland) project.

We at St Andrews Library are delighted to support this project and believe it is a very innovative approach to Open Access advocacy.

St Andrews researchers featured

Dr Akira O’Connor (Laboratory website)
Professor Terry Smith


Open Access At Scottish Universities from HSS Webteam on Vimeo.