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What is ELSSS
ELSSS, the ELectronic Society for Social Scientists
is a not-for-profit organisation
aimed at solving the ever deepening crisis in scholarly and scientific
communication created by the pricing
policies of some commercial publishers that have forced libraries in the
developed world to cut their journal portfolios
and to slash their book collection and that have priced developing and
transition economies out of the knowledge loop altogether.
With institutional support from the Royal Economic Society, the University of St Andrews, the Consortium of
University and Research Libraries, and Scottish Enterprise Fife, ELSSS is committed to:
- Increase competition in the academic journal publishing marketplace by providing direct and
credible alternatives to specific high-priced journals;
- Introduce a fairer and more efficient way of producing, distributing, and using academic
journals whereby the system that currently produces large rents being earned by some commercial publishers
is replaced by a mechanism that yields lowest-cost access and widest dissemination by rewarding only those
individuals who contribute to making high-quality journals, namely, authors, referees, and editors - with substantial savings for libraries and the academic and student community.
ELSSS is proud to announce that its first journal, The Review of Economic Theory, is endorsed by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
Over one thousand economists worldwide have already registered their commitment to participating in one or more ELSSS journals.
Using the highly innovative ELSSS Publishing Template, authors, referees, and readers will be able to attain
new levels of scholarly communication, in terms of quality of research, speed of diffusion, ease of use, and
ability to communicate and interact.
ELSSS's mission
- to return control of journal publishing in the social sciences to social scientists themselves;
- to attempt to remove the inefficiencies in the current system of scientific journal publicing;
- to adopt and devise innovations that can improve the quality of research as well as the speed and reach of its dissemination.
ELSSS's main means for achieving its mission is the publication of
journals in the social sciences that comply with the following criteria:
- aims, scope, and general policies of the journal are determined by
an Advisory Board of outstanding scientific stature and international
reputation;
- the journal is edited by a Board of Editors of outstanding
scientific competence, vast experience in the field, and dedication to
the scientific community;
- both the Advisory Board and the Board of Editors are committed
to devising and implementing policies that lead to the strictest and
fairest criteria of peer review and to the fastest turnaround of
submissions compatible with scrupolous review;
- the journal is run on a strictly non-for-profit basis, with the
cost of peer review, editing, publishing, and dissemination being
recovered through subscriptions;
- break-even subscriptions for the journal can only be levied from high-income countries, with Universities and non-commercial research centres located in the rest of the world being given full-text access to current and past volumes at no cost;
- the journal is committed to responding effectively to the needs
of both researchers and libraries, providing state-of-the-art online
access and low-cost hard-copy options;
- the journal subscribes to ELSSS's "fairness to authors" policy, whereby authors retain full copyright to their material;
- the journal is committed to archiving all its contents in
robust and widely supported formats and to make both current and past
issues available to subscribing institutions in perpetuity.
ELSSS's first journal to be published, The Review of Economic Theory, fulfills all the above criteria and indeed has set the standard to be followed by future journals.
ELSSS is currently exploring the possibility of launching journals in the following fields:
- monetary economics
- public economics
- development economics
Please see our terms and conditions for further information. If you have any suggestions, comments, etc. please do contact us.
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