Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2018

Presentation information

[JJ] Oral

U (Union) » Union

[U-05] Future of Scientific Publishing in Geosciences

Tue. May 22, 2018 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM International Conference Room (IC) (2F International Conference Hall, Makuhari Messe)

convener:Hodaka Kawahata(Atmosphere Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo), Hirokuni Oda(Institute of Geology and Geoinformation, Geological Survey of Japan, AIST), Chairperson:Kawahata Hodaka, Oda Hirokuni, Song Wonsuh

9:50 AM - 10:30 AM

[U05-04] Rationale for publishing a new ZSJ open access journal

★Invited Papers

*Yuko Nagai1 (1.The Zoological Society of Japan)

Keywords:Open Access

In January 2015, the Zoological Society of Japan began publishing a new open access journal, Zoological Letters, in cooperation with BioMed Central. In this talk I describe the history of the society’s publishing efforts and the reasoning behind its decision to launch an open access title. I will also touch on a number of outstanding issues looking forward.


1. 140 years of the Zoological Society of Japan

In 1885, the Tokyo Zoological Society was formed from an organization established in 1878, which had previously been known as the Tokyo Biological Society. In 1888, the society launched its inaugural journal, Zoological Magazine, and in 1897 its first foreign-language title, Annotationes zoologicae Japonenses. In 1984, these two journals were merged and rebranded as Zoological Science, which has now been in publication for 35 years under an independent, subscription-based model.


2. Decision to publish open access

In the new era of increased open access, particularly over the past 10 years, publishers have had to confront some difficult questions about publishing models, which are likely to remain for the next decade as well. The launch of the mega-journal PloS One was certainly one of the milestone marking the start of the open access era. Many major publishing houses have followed suit, but subscription-based models continue to predominate. Faced with these changing times, our society discussed the issue for three years and came to the decision to pursue both subscription and open access models.


3. Issues under consideration
・Author processing charge (APC) amounts and impact factor
・When to introduces APCs
・Parallel publication of two journals: ZS and ZL