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"Now it is our Turn": the Library as Publisher of Online Journals |
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Korwitz U. A. (Germ,an National Library of Medicine)
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In the last two years we have seen several projects to open alternative archives and publish online journals outside the sphere of influence of commercial publishers. The impetus for this development is not only the journal crisis but also - on the side of the authors - the growing understanding that the concentration on the journal market is not healthy anymore.
"German Medical Science (GMS)" is the name of a project financed by the German Research Foundation. It is also the name of a new journal: In co-operation with the Association of Scientific Medical Societies and DIMDI the German National Library of Medicine (ZBMed) publishes a peer-reviewed online-journal since July 2003 (http://www.egms.de). Some dozens of articles have been processed and a collection of 1.800 abstracts of conference papers have been published online and partly in printed form. There is open access to GMS and the copyright belongs to the authors all the time.
In 2004, several German Learned Medical Societies will open up their own online journals within GMS. This kind of work means a shift in paradigms of what a library can be: the ZBMed now is not any more only acquiring and cataloguing material received from publishers but producing a journal by its own. That means responsibility for the complete editorial work with a computer based manuscript flow and publishing system, for efficient contacts to editors and peer-reviewers and an overall good and reliable working flow.
Within the next months, all the features an online journal offers will be implemented and a business model will be set up. It remains to be seen when GMS gets its impact factor or whether alternative ways of evaluating its scientific value will develop.
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