The open access journal I chose to write about for this week’s post, found in the above screenshot, is located at the University of Southern California, but features an editorial board of scholars from around the country and world, including Northwestern University in Qatar and University of Lisbon. The purpose of this open access journal is to give authors a chance to receive heightened exposure and distribution of their work online. The journal’s open access policy talks a lot about how free journals enable researchers to have their work cited much more than fee-based journals and the policy even encourages people to experiment with looking up how many times an article has been cited in an open access journal compared to a traditional journal. The journal believes in maintaining the highest standards of peer-review and uses a double-blind review system where both the reviewer and reviewed are unable to disclose their identities. This journal also claims to be one of the first free online journals and believes that disseminating their work will help to engage all scholars from around the world more easily. The journal also hopes that their open access policy will inspire other journals to switch from being subscription-based in both communication and other sub-fields of the discipline. While this journal is centered on communication, it encourages other sub-fields to submit papers as the field of communication adopts many theories with other disciplines. The journal really stresses collaboration for a variety of ideas and fields to increase its prominence and reach to all types of scholars interested in any type of communication-related field. I get the feeling that this journal does not just want to be leading the charge in communication open access, but that they also want to be considered an innovator in all forms of academic research. I know a lot of traditional communication journals have a much more narrow scope, such as just focusing on rhetoric or more qualitative communication methods, whereas this journal is hoping to alter traditional communication journals with both open access and broader reach of potential readers. It makes sense that an open access journal in communication would want to appeal to a range of disciplines, as communication alone is much smaller than other fields like engineering and health. As a communication master’s student, I like connecting my research to other fields and believe that the more we expand our impact, the more relevant we will be to all fields. I know it is currently difficult for communication researchers to receive big grants, but hopefully by establishing more prominent, broader-reach audience-bases, we can move up in with our impact in expanding knowledge in the world.
Andrew Knight 
Thank you for sharing your perspective on open access. I agree with you the more there is access to the information and research conducted, the more informed individuals can be on about other disciplines as well as their discipline. I think open access would assist with promoting an interdisciplinary collaboration as well. I know as a member of professional organizations I have access to all research in my field published by that organization. However, as a counselor, my discipline intersects with many other fields and access to the research in those fields would better equip me working with individuals from a holistic perspective.
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