Versita launches Versita Open, an Open Access Portal for Scholarly Journals
2010-09-27
Versita today announced the launch of Versita Open, where publishers of scholarly journals can choose an open access model and services that best serve their needs. Versita Open has already attracted over 200 journals across numerous disciplines and expects to publish 500 journals in the near future.
Versita Open (www.versitaopen.com) is an Open Access (OA) platform, which does not impose any open access model on participating journals owned by universities, institutes and societies. Some of them raise funding from article processing charges (“author pays” model), while most are funded by the universities, institutes and societies which own them (“publisher pays” model).
Commenting on the new venture, Jacek Ciesielski, the CEO of Versita says: “Most of the OA advocates did not realize that what they promoted was already widespread among scholarly journals. Our research shows that about 80% of scholarly electronic journals are so called UOA, unintentional open access journals. Their publishers are either not prepared to sell electronic subscriptions or the quality is not good enough. If they try, they often do not cover their costs with the revenues paid by libraries or authors. Therefore, all UOA journals are funded by the universities, institutes and societies that own them”, Ciesielski concludes.
Within the new service, Versita Open provides publishers with the world’s leading e-publishing technology solutions such as MetaPress and Editorial Manager, instead of open source or internal systems. “Versita not only provides them with the technology, but also performs all publishing functions such as journal production, marketing and distribution”, said Dawid Cecula, Business Manager for Versita Open.