Dear Racheli,
Thank you for the update. You are doing a wonderful job as editor of the
journal.
~Haim
On Wednesday, January 1, 2020, 9:51:56 PM EST, Hasafran via Hasafran
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear AJL members,
I have a short apology and a long explanation for you regarding the delayed
publication of Judaica Librarianship’s new issue (#21).
As you know, producing AJL’s scholarly journal is based on voluntary work. In
2018, I was first grappling with a new day job position and then went on a
semester-long sabbatical. In 2019, I had a lot of post-sabbatical catch-up to
do and while working on the content of issue #21, I was also engaged in a
search for a new hosting service for the journal.
Since we transferred JL to electronic publishing in 2013, we have hosted the
journal content on the Digital Commons platform, owned and operated by bepress,
a company that was established by academics to promote open access publishing
and library repository solutions. We teamed up with bepress because they
accommodated our needs, including the management of our delayed access
publishing model (a 12-months exclusive access for AJL members) – but that came
with a cost. In addition to the big-ticket annual fee, as all bepress costumers
we learned from the media in early August 2017, that the company was purchased
by Elsevier, one of the most aggressive commercial publishers in scholarly
publishing (see the Scholarly Kitchen post:
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/08/02/elsevier-acquires-bepress/).
Many of bepress customers moved away from Digital Commons since then and JL
Editorial Board agreed that we should do so, too as AJL should not contribute
to the for-profit publisher. Due to the reasons stated above I was not able to
dedicate much time for this project until 2019, but now I am happy to report
that we found a new hosting service for JL. The journal will move to its new
home in a few weeks, after we migrate its structure, metadata, and articles;
and the new issue will be published on the new platform.
This move constitutes a major saving for AJL and would contribute to the
sustainability of our organization. Furthermore, as many scholarly journals
have done, I am happy to announce that JL Editorial Board and AJL Council
unanimously approved my proposal to move the journal to complete open access
publishing.* This initiative would expand the reach of JL to global readership
even further than it did so far: Since the journal moved to electronic
publishing, the 250 articles posted online were downloaded almost 39,000
times(!) and in 2019 alone, almost 7,500 downloads were recorded. Advancing to
open access publishing is not only the right thing to do, as declared by an AJL
Council member, but it also epitomizes the AJL Mission:
The Association of Jewish Libraries is an international professional
organization that fosters access to information and research in all forms of
media relating to all things Jewish. The Association promotes Jewish literacy
and scholarship and provides a community for peer support and professional
development.
I thank the JL Editorial Board, and AJL Council and Board for their strong and
enthusiastic support and look for the continued support of AJL members in AJL
and its scholarly journal. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Stay tuned for the new issue and new platform announcement!
Happy New Year,
Rachel
* “Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles
combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital
environment. Open Access is the needed modern update for the communication of
research that fully utilizes the Internet for what it was originally built to
do—accelerate research” (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition; https://sparcopen.org/open-access/).
Rachel Leket-Mor, MA, MLIS
Associate Librarian
Curator, Open Stack Collections
IsraPulp Collection
Arizona State University Library
Phone: 480-965-2618
Editor, Judaica Librarianship
Association of Jewish Libraries
https://ajlpublishing.org/jl/
__
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
==================================
Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to:
[email protected]
To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here:
https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: [email protected]
Ha-Safran Archives:
Current:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html
Earlier Listserver:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html
AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
--
Hasafran mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
__
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
==================================
Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to:
[email protected]
To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here:
https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: [email protected]
Ha-Safran Archives:
Current:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html
Earlier Listserver:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html
AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
--
Hasafran mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
