OPEN ACCESS - PART I (Electronic Journals)

Internet has not only changed the concept of its management where librarians or information managers have to played a crucial role but it has also changed the way it can be used by the users. It has become most powerful tool and showing silver lining to everyone involved in it by any mean.

Electronic journals are the journals which are available on the Internet. Scholarly Electronic Journals had always been the jinx of commercialization and led to acceleration of price. Ever increasing cost of these journals deprived academicians and researchers of developing and under developed countries from the scholarly information. But, mushrooming of ‘Open Access’ models/initiatives, at all nooks and corners of the world, has cracked the jinx of commercialization.

In this Part-I, ’ll discuss some of the important portals/interfaces of e-journals, available free of cost on public domain via the Internet.

Directory of Open Access Journals

The idea of creating a comprehensive directory of Open Access Journals was first conceived in the First Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication at Copenhagen in 2002. The Directory of Open Access Journals is hosted, maintained and partly funded by Lund University. There are 3743 journals (as on October, 2008) in the directory and out of these 1305 journals are searchable at article level. It covers more than 220010 articles from all areas of learning.

HighWire Press

HighWire Pres is a division of the Stanford University Libraries. It is a largest repository of high impact, peer-reviewed content with 1185 journals and 4,971,514 full text articles from over 140 scholarly publishers. Higherwire-hosted publishers have collectively made 2,029,167 articles free and produce 71 of the 200 most-frequently-cited journals.

Bioline International

Bioline International is a not-for-profit electronic publishing service committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries. BI provides a unique service by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community world-wide.

Open J-Gate

Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote OAI. Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online. Open J-Gate is also a database of journal literature, indexed from 4514 open access journals, with links to full text at Publisher sites.

AERA SIG Communication of Research - Open Access Journals in the Field of Education

To the best of our ability to discern, we have included only links to electronic journals that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text and accessible without cost. We have excluded professional magazines that are largely not refereed and commercial journals that may only allow access to a very limited number of articles as an enticement to buy. By restricting membership in this way on the list that follows, we hope to do what little we can to promote free access world wide to scholarship in education.

The Electronic Journals Library

The Electronic Journals Library is a service to facilitate the use of scholarly journals on the internet. It offers a fast, structured and unified interface to access full text articles online. It offers an effective use of both scientific and academic journals publishing full text articles in the internet. It comprises 41149 titles from all areas of research, 5166 of which are available online only. There are 19766 journals which are accessible free of charge to anyone.

FreeFullText.com

FreeFullText.com - provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by anyone with Internet access for free (though some may require free registration).

NewJour

NewJour is the archive for the list of new journals and newsletters available on the Internet.

Strategian

The Strategic Guide to Quality Information in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, and Psychology .

Public Library of Science

PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.

BioMed Central

BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. BioMed Central publishes 196 peer-reviewed open access journals.

Free Medical Journals

The unrestricted access to scientific knowledge will have a major impact on medical practice. The Free Medical Journals Site was created to promote the free availability of full text medical journals on the Internet. Under this site 430 journals are being accessible under open access model.

Indian Academy of Science

The Academy, founded in 1934, aims at promoting the progress and upholding the cause of science in pure and applied branches. The Academy's journals are 'open access' and full text is available as PDF files on each journal's website.

Open Humanity Press

Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory. Open Humanities Press journals are fully peer reviewed, scholarly publications that have been chosen by OHP's editorial advisory board for their outstanding contribution to contemporary theory. OHP's journals are independent, published under open access licences and free of charge to readers and authors alike.

Bentham Open Access

Bentham Open Access are launching up to 200 peer-reviewed open access journals. These free-to-view online journals cover all major disciplines of science, technology, and medicine.

LivRe!

LivRe! is the portal developed by CNEN - Comissao Nacional de Energia Nuclear (Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission), through its CIN - Centro de Informacoes Nucleares (Nuclear Information Center), aiming to ease the identification and the access to free journals available on the Internet. The Portal covers scientific journals, magazines, bulletins and newsletters. LivRe! portal is giving free access to 3466 titles on the Internet.