Citation: Solomon, D. (2008). Developing Open Access journals: A practical guide. Oxford, UK: Chandos Publishing.
Solomon’s Developing Open Access journals: A practical guide is just what it says on the cover: a book of practical advice and information for those interested in starting a journal. Despite its age, the vast majority of the book’s contents do not refer to specific technologies or systems, meaning that the bulk of it remains relevant eight years after its publication.
The book is split into three parts: an introduction detailing the history of scholarly journals; instructions on starting an OA journal; and instructions on maintaining an OA journal.
Although the title refers specifically to Open Access (OA) journals, almost all of the information it presents is generalized enough to be equally useful for non-OA journals—although those publishing in a for-profit environment will presumably have additional resources when it comes to things like hosting and income. Indeed, the book is essentially a primer on what a scholarly journal is and usually contains, and much of what it discusses might even be of interest to new scholars who are about to submit their research and anyone else who (for whatever reason) wants to know more about scholarly publishing in general.
Chapters 4, 6, and 7, which deal with finding web hosting, finding funding, and disseminating journal content, are probably the most useful from an OA-specific standpoint. Also of interest is the check-list Solomon includes on launching a journal in chapter 8, and
The final chapter of the book mentions an online annotated bibliography at http://www.developing-oa-journals.org/. Unfortunately, the site appears to have gone offline sometime in early March of 2016, and currently shows only a French announcement that there are “no articles for the moment.” Earlier versions of the site have been archived by the WayBack machine; the latest version of the bibliography I was able to access there was the version from February 2011, which contained 20-30 links to common online resources but nothing exhaustive. Readers interested in finding an annotated list of OA resources would probably be better off browsing the Open Access Directory at Simmons University, which is larger and still actively maintained.