Open Access Journals

I have been thinking about what will happen to my ability to do library science research if there is a period of time where I am not an employee at a major university, since I have come to rely upon journal access that the library purchases. I have started paying attention to which journals are open access and which require paid subscriptions.

There are already several open access library science journals I know of, but I just recently discovered DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals. When I checked the Library and Information Science subject heading, I found those journals I already knew about and several more that look really interesting.

Theological Librarianship is only in its third year, but has some content I really enjoyed. The first issue of the first volume has a nice note to authors, some interesting articles, and an explanation of how to write a Bibliographic Essay. I have found at least one interesting article or essay in every issue that has been published so far. I will definitely be checking in with this journal in June and December when it's two issues become available.

I just recently learned about Library Philosophy and Practice from my professor, Mary Bolin, who taught my Spring 2010 seminar in Metadata and who is one of the editors for this journal. I intend to keep up with this journal, and not just because I just submitted an article to it. (I'm hoping to hear back about it by August.) This journal has a very wide scope and some of the articles are pretty interesting.

The journal of Collaborative Librarianship hasn't had very many articles I have found especially exciting, but over all, its content seems like it could be very useful if I am ever in a position where I need to look for or build partnerships for a library.

DAOJ has many more journals besides these and I am hoping to find time to explore some more of them in the near future.