This week we learned that open-access research is serious business.
Recently, our magazine — the Annals of Improbable Research — went “open access”. We now put all our content online free, and are gradually adding the content from past issues, too.
Librarians, ever more squeezed for funds, had been urging us to do this. And then, they said, be sure to tell the Directory of Open Access Journals.
We wrote to the DOAJ, asking to be included on their list. DOAJ’s motto is “free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages.”
But a DOAJ administrator wrote back, explaining:
“I do not think we will be able to include the Annals of Improbable Research, even if I am sure the magazine does make people both laugh and think.
It is not, however, scientific or scholarly in the way we expect journals in DOAJ to be, meaning making people think, only.”
(This item is adapted from the May issue of mini-AIR.)