Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Electronic journals in music

I subscribe to the listserv of the American Musicological Society, AMS-L. Today, I received a post on that list to announce the publication of the second volume of the online journal, Radical Musicology. This journal is available with no charge to the reader. This model of journal publication, often referred to as open access publishing, allows the research community to read current, peer-reviewed articles at no cost to the reader. I do not want to give the impression that this model is completely free, as it is not. You can read an overview of the open access model on Peter Suber's Web site at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm.

My purpose for mentioning this on the Music Library blog is to introduce readers to this form of publication. Also, if you are interested in doing a thorough literature search while conducting research, you should not neglect to look at the open access music journals. They are often not indexed in RILM, IIMP, or The Music Index.

You can gain access to open access journals in music by going to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) at http://www.doaj.org/, selecting "Arts and Architecture" under "Browse by Subject," and then selecting "Music." DOAJ provides article level indexing for journals with the "DOAJ Content" label next to the title. Unfortunately, most music journals in DOAJ do not yet have this label. If you find an interesting journal here without the label, you will have to go to the journal and browse its contents.

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