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Social Sciences Directory Limited
File:Http://www.socialsciencesdirectory.com/public/journals/1/homeHeaderLogoImage en US.gif
Social Sciences Directory
Type of site
Social Sciences
Available inEnglish
URLwww.socialsciencesdirectory.com
CommercialNo

Social Sciences Directory Limited is an independent publishing company that was established in 2012 and publishes two ‘gold’ open access journals, Social Sciences Directory (www.socialsciencesdirectory.com; ISSN 2049-6869) and Humanities Directory (www.humanitiesdirectory.com; ISSN 2050-6171). These were set up in reaction to the unacceptable restrictions on research dissemination in many countries because of an inability to pay subscription charges. The approach is modern and progressive, whilst adhering to recognised publishing standards. The journals have fully independent editorial boards and conduct full peer review of articles.

History

The Open Access logo.
The first video published alongside a PLOS article: a model of how the human transferrin receptor assists transferrin in releasing iron.[1]

The concept of open access journals has existed since the late 1980’s, with journals such as GeoLogic existing as ‘digital only’, the fore-running idea to ‘open access’. By the turn of the century scientific journals were beginning to be offered in a similar way and open access became a model which was followed in a number of disciplines from engineering to political science.

An opportunity was identified by publisher Dan Scott in the field of social sciences to create a directory through which peer reviewed articles can be published and offered digitally through the open access model.

Dan Scott had extensive experience in the publishing industry through work with UK based[2], internationally renowned publisher of management content, Emerald Group Publishing and saw an opportunity in the social sciences and in particular in the growth of the delivery of open access content.

In 2012 the Social Sciences Directory was launched, with its first issue being published in September, 2012 and included contributions from some of the world’s leading names in the fields of psychology, social sciences and medicine such as Peter, Forster, Mary Morris and Manju Sharma.

Throughout late 2012 the Social Sciences Directory was accepted into a number of the most prominent academic indexing services including ProQuest, Ebsco and OCLC, and this was followed in early 2013 by ExLibris and the Directory of Open Access Journals ensuring a presence in the leading

In July 2013 the Social Sciences Directory was accepted into the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). This signified industry acceptance and placed the publisher alongside the other leading names in the world of open access content.

Although still establishing a regular publishing schedule, further issues were published in January 2013, and then again in April 2013.

In August 2013 the publishers second publication was launched, with the first issue of the Humanities Directory.

In April 2013, PLOS announced their new initiative, the PLOS Text Mining Collection, to assist researchers in easily retrieving and extracting information from a digital text format.[3]

Publishing Concept

The philosophy is that research in one field can also have applications in areas of research beyond that intended and the inter-disciplinary nature of a large collection of work – spanning the boundaries of subject and state - will help to cross-fertilise ideas. Open access publishing provides significant benefits for authors and readers alike in speeding up the time to publication and dissemination, author copyright retention and providing value-for-money for taxpayers.

A print version has been dispensed with to remove the costs of print production and postage, as well as to provide unlimited pagination. A criticism of the very high rejection rates from the peer-review process is that it is a legacy from the past when journals had limited print capacity and had to select only a small number for publication, with the result that very good work could be rejected unnecessarily and go to waste. In a world of unlimited online space, this barrier should no longer pertain and allow a greater amount of material to be published.

As well as peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, the journals would publish or link to case studies, data sets, interviews, news reports, op-eds, video and audio clips, conference proceedings, presentations, essays, annual reports and more. User behaviour is changing fast. Students and young academics working today have been brought up in the digital era and are used to doing easy, federated searches of database content, based on keywords – 84% typically begin information searches from a search engine; only 1% through a library website or an online database1 . Two things stem from this:

1. it follows that individual journal titles and books will simply become an anachronism as searches are conducted on topics and keywords

2. researchers will use the results of their searches, which will certainly contain – but may not be exclusively – scholarly research. Much of this additional reading around the subject would add value to scholars

Multi-disciplinary research will be facilitated by this federating of information which is, ultimately, in researchers’ self-interest. Now that most research is carried out online, key metrics are the usage and cost-per-download of journals. Niche academic journals often have a price tag that is inverse to their readership – the more exclusive/prestigious they are, the more highly they are priced. However, if a niche journal has such a small audience that its cost becomes unsustainable, it risks being cut.

Social media and blogging is being provided to allow discussions to take place in virtual forums, as well as for marketing purposes Content is made freely available to all under a Creative Commons CC-BY copyright licence

An editor-in-chief and editorial boards – made up of volunteers – were appointed through a selection process. This has given Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory both a rich internationality in their composition and also a broad spread of disciplinary knowledge.

Business model

As with other open access journals such as the successful PLoS, the Social Sciences Directory operates upon a business model of charging authors for the publication of their work rather than the user for accessing it.

Authors pay a minimal fee of £120 for their work to be published, but the Social Sciences Directory have also introduced the concept of institutional membership, allowing multiple scholars from the same institution to submit an unlimited number of papers for a fixed annual fee.

Although raising potential questions about conflict of interest when academics are both submitting and reviewing articles, the model provides a relative cheap way of engaging a large content with scholarly content.

It is a model which until recently has been seemingly unsustainable, but following the success of PLOS One, the idea of a journal with a wider scope and thus inviting a range of research areas has become a commonly used model.

Impact

The initiatives of the Public Library of Science in the United States have initiated similar proposals in Europe, most notably the "Berlin Declaration" developed by the German Max Planck Society, which has also pledged grant support for author charges (see also the Budapest Open Access Initiative).

Publications

  • Directory of Social Sciences, ISSN 2049-6869; December 2012
  • Directory of Humanities, ISSN 2050-6171; December 2012

Insitutional Memberships

The agreement which was reached between the Social Sciences Directory and the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL) in July 2013 was something of a landmark for open access publishing. It signified a change in the way in which research and publishing opportunities were made available to faculty, with librarians actively seeking avenues for their faculty’s research to be published rather then reacting to specific calls from departments within the institution. Although exploratory, it has been welcomed by SHEDL and seen as a way in which Scottish research can be made more readily available.

Other institutions to come on-board with the new publisher include the University of Nottingham, one of the world’s top 100 Universities and the University of Huddersfield.

Contributors

Contributors to the Social Science Directory include notable Australian psychologist Dr Mary Morris PhD who has lectured at the Charles Darwin University and a former chair of the Northern Territory Branch of the Australian Psychological Association.

Other contributors:

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0000051, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0000051 instead.
  2. ^ Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 1.
  3. ^ "PLOS Text Mining Collection". 2013. Retrieved April 19, 2013.

Further Reading

Category:Scholarly communication Category:Academic publishing Category:Open access (publishing) Category:Lists of academic journals Category:Open access journals

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