Sunday, October 16, 2011

OPEN ACCESS CONTRIBUTIONS JOURNAL NOW ACCEPTING MANUSCRIPTS


This winter-plumaged American Goldfinch was one of the species examined in the first paper published through the newly updated Bird Conservation Research, Inc. Contributions series.

Open access publications on the internet are available to all readers at no cost. No journal subscription is required and access is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Although subscriber-only print journals have long dominated the field of science, the practical needs of researchers have already resulted in freely available internet sources of information surpassing traditional outlets in actual viewership. The free publications of Bird Conservation Research, Inc., for example, have a much larger annual viewership than many subscriber-based journals.

In the emerging field of online science journals, the frequent subscription requirement and extremely high author’s publication costs have continued to limit viewership and the variety of papers offered. These factors further drive researchers to seek new internet sources for information.

Bias has also emerged as an issue in scientific publication. Scholars have demonstrated that researchers from less prestigious institutions who do not have “celebrity” co-authors, as well as women researchers, can be at a significant disadvantage in having papers accepted by traditional outlets.

To address shortcomings like these in scientific publication, BCR has revised its Contributions series to make it not only open-access, but also available for author submissions in an unbiased and low cost environment. BCR uses a double blind peer review process that makes authors and their institutions invisible to reviewers. See author instructions.

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