Open Serial Content Supporting Theology & Religion
Maria Stanton · ANZTLA EJournal · 2021
Within the scholarly publishing community, we have had an ongoing discussion about the level of rigor within open access (OA) publishing.In the course of my work as the Director of a team responsible for the quality of a leading bibliographic index supporting the discovery of academic articles, I have encountered a range of positions on this issue and the importance of OA publishing.I have met strong advocates for OA who offer the defense that, even in the exclusive days of print-based subscription journals, there have always been some higher quality and lesser quality journals being published in any field of scholarly thought.They believe concerns about quality can be addressed within the community through various governance initiatives.I have also encountered faculty who have shared quietly that they have been advised by members of their tenure and promotion committee that they should not publish in OA journals due to perceived quality concerns.Many of these individuals make it clear they don't have time to engage with the community to address underlying concerns about the quality of one publishing model over another.My recent research is focused on the question of quality within the study of religion and theology.Has the ease of launching an OA journal introduced, exacerbated, or otherwise increased the publication of lesser quality research in the study of religion and theology?