Economics and quality estimation of open access journals

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