New Open Access platform for Journal of Terrorism Research

In 2010 the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at University of St Andrews launched the online Journal of Terrorism Research (JTR). With perfect timing for Open Access Week and its theme of 'Open for Collaboration', JTR celebrates its 5th anniversary with the latest volume and full journal archive published on a new and improved platform.

Since 2011 JTR has been supported by the University Library's Journal Hosting Service, and was made available through the Library's Open Journal Systems platform. Our OJS platform supports scholarly journals run by our research community, and this platform continues to be available as a free service to members of staff and students at St Andrews.

In early 2015 the decision was taken to work with Ubiquity Press to trial an alternative, collaborative service. For this pilot service we have migrated JTR to the new infrastructure with enhanced technical support and additional features provided by Ubiquity Press. Support and advice continues to be available from the Library, and the editorial control and production of content is managed by CSTPV exactly as before.

Apart from the new fresh look to the journal, immediate benefits include the production and registration of DOIs and clearer marking of articles with peer-reviewed status and CC BY license.

The journal editors are delighted with the new platform:

This is a great way to celebrate our 5th Anniversary. Thanks to all our authors and reviewers who have contributed thus far - here's to many more years of quality articles in this important field of study.

Journal of Terrorism Research is published by the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews. The aim of JTR is to provide a space for academics and counter-terrorism professionals to publish work focused on the study of terrorism. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the study of terrorism, high-quality submissions from all academic and professional backgrounds are encouraged. Students are also warmly encouraged to submit work for publication.

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.

St Andrews Library contributes case study to Ebooks in Education

Readers might remember the SPARC Europe Open Access in the Humanities Roadshow that visited St Andrews in November last year. We blogged about the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture series available Open Access on Research@StAndrews:FullText. The Library answered a call for content with its case study of this partnership with the Centre for French History and Culture.  Creating open access books: a partnership between a university library and research centre was successfully shortlisted for inclusion in a new book after approval from a review panel. Ebooks in education: Realising the vision was published by Ubiquity Press in November last year.  The case study examines how the partnership grew organically as the desire for the development of a new scholarly research publishing platform naturally combined with the Library's evolving Open Access services.  It benefited from valuable advice and comments from the editor-in-chief of the series, Dr Guy Rowlands.  Dr Eric Nelson, Professor in the History Department of Missouri University, provided helpful insights from an author's perspective.

The book is edited by Dr Hazel Woodward with a foreword by Professor Madeleine Atkins, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It proposes that ebooks are rapidly becoming an acceptable medium for scholarly communication. Topics addressed include further education, distance learning, teaching, accessibility, the mobile user experience and library services. The case studies provide valuable supporting evidence and include contributions from stakeholders all over the UK.  Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, also contributed a chapter.

Figure 1 BIEN, D. D., SMITH, J. M., & BLAUFARB, R. (2010). Caste, class and profession in old regime France the French army and the Ségur reform of 1781. Image from the title page reproduced by kind permission of the owner (from the case study)

Head of Cataloguing and Repository Services, Janet Aucock, who authored the St Andrews case study said "The ebook case studies show how units, staff and students can work together to harness new and existing technologies that let users explore how they can successfully produce, disseminate and use new formats in teaching and research".  Since publication on 28 November 2014 the book has been downloaded 1366 times which is very high for this type of book.  PDF downloads have far exceeded ePub and Kindle which suggests a user preference for a format that can be easily shared and used on the widest range of devices. 

Have you read the book?  If so, why not leave a comment below?