The magic link! an easy way to promote OA

Here is one very, very easy way to promote OA! Create a magic link to a collection of subject-specific OA journals. Include the magic link on subject pathfinders and/or subject blogs, and send it to your faculty liaisons!

Here is how: simply go to the Directory of Open Access Journals. Browse by subject. Decide whether you want a main subject heading, or a subheading. For example, you could select Chemistry, or Analytical Chemistry. After you have clicked on the subject heading of your choice, copy the URL at the top of the page. For example, for a listing of Chemistry journals, the URL is: http://www.doaj.org/ljbs?cpid=60. Voila! This is your magic URL. This is exactly how we have created the link to LIS journals in DOAJ, for OA Librarian.

If anyone knows about a way to create a magic link to subject-specific articles in OA archives, please do post a comment, we'd like to hear about this!

This would help very much to address the strategy for faculty members Peter Suber talks about in the Feb. 06 Open Access Newsletter - under "Six Things that Researchers Need to Know about Open Access":

(1) What OA journals exist in your field?

When "presented with a list of reasons why they have not chosen to publish in an OA journal and asked to say which were important...[t]he reason that scored highest (70%) was that authors were not familiar enough with OA journals in their field." Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown, "Authors and Open Access Publishing," Learned Publishing, July 2004, p. 220.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11003/

There's no excuse not to know the OA journals in your field. Go to the DOAJ and browse by discipline.
http://www.doaj.org/...

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.