New open-access journal Quantitative Science Studies

January 14, 2019. The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) is pleased to announce the launch of a new journal, Quantitative Science Studies (QSS). QSS is owned by ISSI, the primary scholarly and professional society for scientometrics and informetrics, and will be published jointly with the MIT Press in compliance with fair open access principles. QSS will be a journal run for and by the scientometric community. The initial editorial board will be fully constituted by the former editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics (JOI), an Elsevier-owned journal.

The transition of the editorial board from JOI to QSS was initiated by the unanimous resignation, on January 10, of all members of the JOI editorial board. The editorial board members are in agreement that (1) scholarly journals should be owned by the scholarly community rather than by commercial publishers, (2) journals should be open access under fair principles, and (3) publishers should make their citation data freely available. These conditions were not accepted by Elsevier, prompting the termination of the relationship with this publisher.

The content for QSS will be open access and therefore freely available for readers worldwide. Funding for establishing and marketing the new journal has been provided in part by the MIT Libraries. To enable access for authors, the MIT Press will charge a comparatively low charge per article which will be fully covered by the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) - Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology for the first three years of operation with support of the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz. The funds from TIB will be managed by the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA) to ensure that the journal is operating under fair open access principles. The MIT Press is also a full participant in the I4OC initiative, which promotes unrestricted availability of scholarly citation data.

QSS is now open and accepting submissions. Please consult the journal’s website for more details. For the latest updates, follow us on Twitter @QSS_ISSI.

Further information

Cassidy R. Sugimoto, President of ISSI.

Vincent Larivière, Interim Editor-in-Chief of QSS.

Nick Lindsay, Director of Journals and Open Access at The MIT Press.

Johan Rooryck, President of FOAA and Saskia de Vries, Project Leader of FOAA.

Marco Tullney, Head of Publishing Services/Open Access Coordination at TIB.