Journal portals – an important infrastructure for non-commercial scholarly open access publishing

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at third party journal portals, which facilitate the low-cost publishing of open access journals. Portals have become very important enablers for converting journals published by scholarly societies and universities to open access, in particular in the social sciences and humanities. Design/methodology/approach Portals were identified using a combination of methods including a literature search, interviews with experts, a key word web search and by analyzing web addresses and publishers in data from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Findings In total, 21 portals fitting our definition were identified. Together these published more than 6,000 journals. They contribute around 10 percent of the journals indexed in the DOAJ, and the content is very highly skewed to certain countries, in particular Latin America and Asia. Originality/value While there have been earlier case study reports about individual portals, especially SciElo, this is probably the first systematic study of this phenomenon as a whole.