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Social Sciences Directory Limited is an independent publishing company that was established in 2012 and publishes two ‘gold’ open access journals, Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory. These were set up in reaction to the unacceptable restrictions on research dissemination in many countries because of an inability to pay subscription charges. The open-access approach is considered modern and progressive, whilst adhering to recognised publishing standards. The journals have fully independent editorial boards and conduct full peer review of articles.

History


The concept of open access journals has existed since the late 1980’s, with journals such as GeoLogic existing as ‘digital only’, the fore-running idea to ‘open access’. By the turn of the century scientific journals were beginning to be offered in a similar way and open access became a model which was followed in a number of disciplines from engineering to political science.

An opportunity was identified in the field of social sciences to create a directory through which peer reviewed articles can be published and offered digitally through the open access model.

In 2012 the Social Sciences Directory was launched, with its first issue being published in September, 2012 and included contributions from some of the world’s leading names in the fields of psychology, social sciences and medicine such as Peter Forster, Mary Morris and Manju Sharma.

Throughout late 2012 the Social Sciences Directory was accepted into a number of the most prominent academic indexing services including ProQuest, Ebsco and OCLC, and this was followed in early 2013 by ExLibris and the Directory of Open Access Journals ensuring a presence in the leading

In July 2013 the Social Sciences Directory was accepted into the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). This signified industry acceptance and placed the publisher alongside the other leading names in the world of open access content.

Although still establishing a regular publishing schedule, further issues were published in January 2013, and then again in April 2013.

In August 2013 the publishers second publication was launched, with the first issue of the Humanities Directory.

Publishing Concept
Open access publishing provides significant benefits for authors and readers alike in speeding up the time to publication and dissemination, author copyright retention and providing value-for-money for taxpayers.

A print version has been dispensed with, thus removing the costs of print production and postage, as well as offer the increased draw of unlimited pagination. A criticism of the very high rejection rates from the peer-review process is that it is a legacy from the past when journals had limited print capacity and had to select only a small number for publication, with the result that credible work could be rejected unnecessarily.

As well as peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, the increased accessibility enabled by being online only meant that journals could easily link to related sources of data such as case studies, data sets, interviews, news reports, op-eds, video and audio clips, conference proceedings, presentations, essays, annual reports.

Social media and blogging is being provided to allow discussions to take place in virtual forums, as well as for marketing purposes Content is made freely available to all under a Creative Commons CC-BY copyright licence with direct links to social media and blogging allowing for students and authors to discuss and directly link their citations.

Business model
As with other open access journals such as the successful PLoS, the Social Sciences Directory operates upon a business model of charging authors for the publication of their work rather than the user for accessing it.

Authors pay a minimal fee for their work to be published, but the Social Sciences Directory have also introduced the concept of institutional membership, allowing multiple scholars from the same institution to submit an unlimited number of papers for a fixed annual fee.

Although raising potential questions about conflict of interest when academics are both submitting and reviewing articles, the model provides a relative cheap way of engaging a large content with scholarly content.

It is a model which until recently has been seemingly unsustainable, but following the success of PLOS One, the idea of a journal with a wider scope and thus inviting a range of research areas has become a commonly used model.

Impact
The initiatives of the Public Library of Science in the United States have initiated similar proposals in Europe, most notably the "Berlin Declaration" developed by the German Max Planck Society, which has also pledged grant support for author charges (see also the Budapest Open Access Initiative).

Publications

 * Directory of Social Sciences, ; December 2012
 * Directory of Humanities, ; December 2012

Insitutional Memberships
The agreement which was reached between the Social Sciences Directory and the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL) in July 2013 was something of a landmark for open access publishing. It signified a change in the way in which research and publishing opportunities were made available to faculty, with librarians actively seeking avenues for their faculty’s research to be published rather then reacting to specific calls from departments within the institution. Although exploratory, it has been welcomed by SHEDL and seen as a way in which Scottish research can be made more readily available.

Other institutions to come on-board with the new publisher include the University of Nottingham, one of the world’s top 100 Universities and the University of Huddersfield.

Contributors
Contributors to the Social Science Directory include notable Australian psychologist Dr Mary Morris PhD who has lectured at the Charles Darwin University and a former chair of the Northern Territory Branch of the Australian Psychological Association.

Other contributors:


 * Professor Marika Tiggerman
 * Jude Kagoro PhD
 * Johanna C. Granville PhD
 * Dr Peter Forster PhD
 * Dr Sudhanshu Sharma
 * Manju Sharma
 * Professor Sangeeta Sharma PhD
 * Dr Gretchen Peterson PhD
 * Elizabeth A. Noren