JISC

The School of Advanced Study, University of London (SAS) will develop SAS Open Journals (SAS-OJ), a re-usable overlay journal interface, using Amicus Curiae, the journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS)/Society for Advanced Legal Studies (SALS), as a test case and exemplar, in conjunction with the SAS repository, SAS-Space.

The School is charged by the HEFCE with a mission of research promotion and facilitation (RPF). Composed of ten specialist research Institutes, of which IALS is one, it fulfils that mission through programmes of conferences and seminars, the provision of world-class specialist library facilities, networking and advocacy on behalf of its subject communities, and extensive and innovative publishing, both print and electronic.

Part of that publishing programme is SAS-Space (http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk), the institutional repository for the School. SAS-Space contains research outputs from across the Institutes; but also works in partnership with learned societies and other scholarly bodies with which the School has many and longstanding links, to provide an open access publishing option as part of its RPF brief. Many of these bodies, whilst highly influential and well-regarded, are small and lack the resources to build and maintain this type of facility on their own account. The culture of open access journal publishing is not yet well established amongst the smaller arts and humanities journals which we intend to engage in this project in the longer term. However, as the business model for this type of small self-published journal comes under increasing pressure, SAS Open Journals offers a low-cost solution.

Amicus Curiae publishes articles on legal issues of cross sector interest and opinion, addressing the concerns of not only legal academics and students, but also the legal profession, the judiciary and the civil service. It is published quarterly by IALS and issued free of charge to members of SALS, and is also available by annual subscription. A listing of past issues from 2003 to the pre-current issue is made freely available on the IALS website with PDF download options from SAS-SPACE.

Objectives

The project will develop a re-usable overlay journal interface, using Amicus Curiae as the exemplar, thus completing the transition of the journal from print to web. This system will then be made available, at minimal cost, to journals produced within the School, and to publications by cognate learned societies. The system will greatly increase open access publishing capacity in the humanities and social sciences, and further fulfil the School’s RPF mission.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

(i) a newly created overlay journal interface for the journal Amicus Curiae;

(ii) technical documentation and developer materials for use by other developers integrating Open Journal Systems with SWORD-compliant repositories;

(iii) a feasibility study into the eventual adoption by Amicus Curiae of a full life-cycle manuscript management workflow using SAS Open Journals;

(iii) a presentation at the July 2011 SAS conference on ‘Open access publishing in the  humanities’, and at other relevant events;

(iv) a workshop event for editors of potential new journal partners;

(iv) a project blog;

(v) a suite of print literature for promoting the service.