Economics and Quality Estimation of Open Access E-journals

In university libraries and the scholarly community, there is growing concern with the high costs ofscholarly journal publishing and a rising movement in favour of Open Access publishing. There aremany factors that will influence the success of non-profit and Open Access journals; economicpower, economic survival, political values, and status changes are only a few of these. This articleprovides a critical introduction to two of these areas – economic survival and status – in order toillustrate two important factors of Open Access survival. In particular focus is the idea of the valueof information and the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as a potential measurement of journal quality. Itis argued that an institutional approach may add a broader perspective that may serve to contextualiseboth these ideas.