Semantic Web Journal is Going for Gold

IOS Press is pleased to announce that Semantic Web journal (iospress.com/semantic-web) will be switching (or “flipping” in industry terms) to become a fully Open Access (OA) journal.

Since its launch in 2009 the Semantic Web journal (SWJ) has been a firm supporter of so called Green Open Access. For SWJ, that means that all journal issues are published in accepted manuscript format on the semantic-web-journal.net site and available to anyone, for free. The official published version of the issues are available only to licensed users at IOS Press’ publishing platform (content.iospress.com/journals/semantic-web).

Some articles are available also in OA through IOS Press, as authors could opt-in to publish with full OA. In this case authors are asked to cover an Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the cost of publication. The costs involved in publishing SWJ are thus partly covered by income from user licenses and partly from APCs, meaning SWJ is currently a hybrid between a licensed journal and an OA journal. This model has made it possible for the articles to reach a wide readership while not introducing financial barriers to authors wishing to publish in SWJ. However, in recent years there has been a call to action from an increasing number of funding agencies asking for a transition to full or Gold Open Access. Today many funding agencies will cover the associated APCs on behalf of authors as part of the research grant. IOS Press and SWJ have now decided to answer this call and switch to a single publishing model that is fully Open Access.

Other than the manner in which the articles are disseminated (without any access barriers) and how the costs of publication are covered, the switch to full OA has no effect on how the journal operates.