Open Science for Arts, Design and Music/Publishers/AIS/Design Journal: Storia e Ricerche
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AIS/Design Journal: Storia e Ricerche
[edit]Description of the Publication
[edit]AIS/Design. Storia e Ricerche is the free, peer-reviewed, multilingual (Italian/English) online journal of the Italian Association of Design Historians (AIS/Design). The journal, founded in 2012, publishes research in all areas of design history. It is published every six months and adopts the double-blind peer review process. Articles feature many illustrations under copyright.
Implementation of Open Access
[edit]Starting point
[edit]We approached the editorial team and offered our support to implement open access and begin the application process to DOAJ. The journal is available online and can be red and downloaded for free with no need to registration or membership. Articles are not released under any CC licence. Thus, although the journal is described as 'open access' on the website, it does not comply with the requirements of open access. Moreover, the single articles do not include a DOI nor a recommended citation.
Challenges and recommendations
[edit]- CC licences and open access: the editorial team expressed their willingness to open the journal but also their awareness of possible internal resistance within the association to the adoption of open licences, thus without NC and ND
- we explained differences between CC licences and clarified the requirements of open access
- we recommended the adoption of the CC BY-SA 4.0 for texts (unless otherwise stated)
- Copyrighted material: the journal features many images under copyright that makes the release of content in open access challenging
- we suggested to adopt the 'as open as possible, and closed as necessary' policy, hence re-use open content when possible, keep the images under copyright and use CC BY-SA 4.0, unless differently stated
- DOAJ:
- we explained the value of being included in DOAJ and clarified the requirement
- Open access policy: the journal does not feature an open access policy on its website (as required to be included in DOAJ)
- we provided a draft of open access policy to be discussed internally by the editorial team and eventually uploaded online once approved
- DOI (as required to be included in DOAJ) and recommended citation:
- we provided a template for the recommended citation to be included in each article
- we listed a number DOI providers
Implementation
[edit]After an initial contact and a beginning of collaboration, the work on opening up the content came to a halt due to a change in the editorial team of the magazine that will take effect from 2025. However, the journal still took a step forward towards openness and there are good chances that the new editorial board will pick up where the current one left off.
- CC licences: the two issues of AIS/Design. Storia e Ricerche published in 2024 – Storie di Semiotica e Design, v. 11 n. 20 (2024); wip – have been resealed with the CC licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Although not compliant with open access, the licence is a starting point towards opening the content.
Lessons Learned
[edit]Since the magazine was already available online for free, it was an excellent candidate for the opening of content. The initial absence of CC licences, even though the journal was advertised as open, suggested the need to clarify the open access requirements and the still common confusion between 'downloadable for free' and 'open'. The conversation with the editors also revealed a need for arguments to convince authors (and in this case also the members of the association) to agree to the use of open licences. For fear of a loss of control over possible re-use of materials, the most common licence is CC BY NC ND.