coryschires

It sounds like you saying the indexing services are the problem? I don't think that's the case. The citation indices can give you a rough idea of a journal's clout within their field based on how frequently their articles are cited. That's (at least arguably) a reasonable way of measuring prestige. Obviously, authors want to be published in the top journals in their field, which also makes sense. We're not specifically trying to disrupt any of these practices.

We've been discussing HR3699 on Scholastica: http://scholasticahq.com/conversation/questions/hr3699-and-t...

At the risk of being reductive, I generally believe publicly funded research ought to be publicly available (or at least available at a price that's reasonable for the average person).

We're not currently planning to open source the platform. But we are encouraging (though not forcing) journals to provide open access to their content. At the moment, our goal is to provide journal editors with a quality tool. We'll be thinking more about open access as we continue to add publishing functionality.

As for open source solutions, there is OJS (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs). It's heart is in the right place, but it's an unfortunately clumsy product that lacks many of important features we're looking to add.