{"id":1046,"date":"2015-12-22T14:47:19","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T19:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/?p=1046"},"modified":"2015-12-22T14:47:19","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T19:47:19","slug":"the-open-journal-of-astrophysics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2015\/12\/22\/the-open-journal-of-astrophysics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Open Journal of Astrophysics"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m pleased to point out that the Open Journal of Astrophysics<\/em> <\/a>is now open for submissions. Editor-in-chief Peter Coles has all the details<\/a>. I’m a member of the editorial board of this new journal, although I confess that I have done nothing to help with it so far.<\/p>\n

The journal performs peer review like other scholarly journals.\u00a0Articles in it are published on the arxiv<\/a> (where most astrophysics articles get posted anyway). The journal does not have the overhead of publishing in the traditional way, so it is free for both authors and readers.<\/p>\n

I find the economics of traditional scholarly journals utterly baffling<\/a>. As Coles observes, “The only useful function that journals provide is peer review, and we in the research community do that (usually for free) anyway.” I hope that efforts like this one will point the way to a more efficient system. I urge my astrophysics colleagues to submit articles to it.<\/p>\n

Now let me confess to a bit of hypocrisy, or at least timidity. I’m hoping to submit an article for publication in the next few weeks, and I’m planning to send it to an established journal, not the Open Journal<\/em>. The only reason is that I expect to apply for promotion (from Associate Professor to Full Professor) this summer, and I think there’s a significant possibility that some of the people evaluating my application will be more impressed by an established journal, with all the various accoutrements such as impact factors that go along with it.<\/p>\n

This is quite possibly the last time in my career that I’ll have to worry about this sort of thing. In general, I care about the opinions of people who have actually read my work and formed a judgment based on its merits. Such people don’t need to rely on things like impact factors, which are a terribly stupid<\/a> way to evaluate quality. So after this one, I’ll promise to submit future articles to the Open Journal<\/em> (unless I have coauthors whom I can’t persuade to do it, I guess).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m pleased to point out that the Open Journal of Astrophysics is now open for submissions. Editor-in-chief Peter Coles has all the details. I’m a member of the editorial board of this new journal, although I confess that I have done nothing to help with it so far. The journal performs peer review like other … Continue reading The Open Journal of Astrophysics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}