JEMS
- Where (location, organization, university, etc.) is the journal from?
- What are the purpose, goals, scope, etc. of the journal?
- How does the journal address/explain open access? How (if at all) does it position itself within the open access movement?
I chose the Journal of Early Modern Studies (JEMS), which is published by the University of Florence, in Florence, Italy.
JEMS is peer reviewed, open access, international journal that does not specialize in one particular discipline, but rather accepts papers from a wide variety of academic disciplines that deal with Early Modern European culture, and the European Renaissance. Their goal is open academic and scholarly debates over a wide spectrum of topics including: religion, art, literature, history, politics, sociology, language, and cultural studies.
This journal explains it self as open access as anyone can submit to the journal, and there is no subscription fee to be able to view the journal.
Within the open access community JEMS distinguishes itself as a reliable source for scholarly information. After a submission is reviewed by the editors if it is pegged for publication it is then sent to at least two other readers in a double blind style of evaluation. Submissions that pass the scrutiny of both readers is sent back to the editors for the final decision on if it should be published. JEMS also lists a number of organizations and scholarly search engines that include it with their indexes. Including: DOAJ, Google Scholar, ProQuest, BASE and more.
Early modern sounds a bit like an oxymoron – I admit I had never heard the term before. Seems to be commonly defined as the period between the start of the Renaissance (or Fall of Constantinople) and the French Revolution.
It looks like they do a fantastic job, but they really need to update their website. It is quite rare to see a journal publish under Creative Commons!
Nice find.