In 2020, Scholarly Communications launched a new program to help faculty and researchers publish open access academic journals at Appalachian State University. The first two journals were created in collaboration with the Center for Analytics Research and Education at Appalachian's Walker College of Business, University of Arkansas, and SAS Institute, the world's largest privately-held software business.
Appalachian's Head of Scholarly Communications, Agnes Gambill, has worked closely with the Knowledge Futures Group, a non-profit that was initially founded as a partnership between MIT Press and MIT Media Lab, to implement PubPub, the open publishing platform used to support Appalachian's open journals program. Knowledge Futures Group builds products that make knowledge open and accessible for all. Applachian State University Library is a founding member of Knowledge Future Group's program, Community Publishing for Libraries (CP4L).
The new journals are unique as they are considered "data journals," a type of scholarly journal that publishes data papers and datasets. While Appalachian publishes original and peer-reviewed data papers, the University of Arkansas hosts the datasets that are associated with each publication on its Teradata platform. The two journals include BeeXML: Journal for Bee Data Standardization and Data & Analytics For Good. Both journals aim to further one or more of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to support research practices that facilitate open science. The newest addition to the open journal program is the Journal of the Blue Cross Institute for Health and Human Services (JIHHS).
To learn more about Appalachian's Open Journal program, check out this blog post by the Knowledge Futures Group. The blog post features a presentation by Professor Gambill at the 2021 Library Publishing Forum and a brief virtual tour of the open data journals.
For more information about open access, scholarly publishing, or how to start a new open access journal, contact Scholarly Communications at Appalachian State University.
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