Scientific Journals International (SJI)

Quadruple-blind review system

We employ an innovative quadruple-blind review system, where the referees, authors and editors remain anonymous throughout the peer-review process. Names of the chief editor or associate editors are not published on SJI Web site. Authors or reviewers cannot contact the editors to influence the review process deliberately or unintentionally. The editors are appointed by the SJI Board.

Flexible stylistic rules

SJI maintains minimal stylistic rules and considers papers that follow any style manual such as APA, MLA, or Chicago. All traditional journals have very restrictive stylistic policies that unduly create artificial barriers and in effect retard innovation and creativity. Restricting the authors and researchers to only one style manual is an obsolete concept for open-access electronic journals and perhaps for the future of scholarly publishing.

Article length

SJI does not set the same limitations on the length of the article as other traditional journals do. For our standard journals, an article can be up to 50 pages long. Recently, we have also launched micro journals that publish brief articles that can be up to 10 pages long.

Post-print archiving permitted

SJI allows and encourages authors to deposit their post-prints in open-access archives or repositories. The primary benefit of post-print self-archiving is reaching a larger audience which enhances the visibility and impact of research.

New vision for scholarly publishing

SJI is pioneering a new vision for scholarly publishing. It combines the open-access model with innovative approaches to address the problems in the current scholarly publishing system at the worldwide level. This revolutionary project is an attempt to provide a one-stop efficient forum for publishing research and creative work from all disciplines.

Publication speed, fairness and integrity

According to surveys, a large majority of authors cite slow review process and publication delays in the current system as a major obstacle to their publishing objectives. Many have also expressed concerns about the fairness and integrity of the peer review process in traditional scholarly publishing. Some scholars have argued that there is a need to free the publication process for faster and fairer access.

One of the fastest-growing forums

Our innovative approach has received overwhelming support and appreciation from scholars, researchers and editors from every corner of the glob. As a result of such worldwide attention, SJI is becoming one of the fastest growing forums for publishing research and creative work from all disciplines. This is precisely the reason why some traditional publishers are becoming hostile to SJI and other open-access journals.

Fraud Alert

It has come to our attention that a couple of individuals and organizations are propagating libelous, deceptive, misleading and false information and rumors about SJI via anonymous emails and other publications. We are taking legal actions against such fraudulent and libelous activities. However, we are not surprised. Please read the section below titled Suppression of New Ideas & Innovation and The Open-Access Movement. If you receive any fraudulent and suspicious emails or reports, please forward them to us so that we can collect additional evidence for our legal actions. Thank you for your support.

The Open-Access Movement

In light of declarations supporting open access to research literature from international bodies including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), many scholars now believe that open-access publishing is the wave of the future.

During the past few years, the rising cost of research journals has forced many individuals and institutions to cancel their subscriptions. The recent trend toward mergers among publishers has also contributed to the price increases. Moreover, universities have faced decreasing support for libraries as spending on libraries has fallen under 3% of average university spending since 1980s. All of this is detrimental to both readers and authors, because readers’ access to research is limited, and consequently reduces the authors’ exposure. It creates barriers for the scientific community from scholarly interaction and access.

According to the Blackwell Periodical Price Indexes, there has been an average increase in journal prices of 178.3% in science and technical journals between 1990 and 2000. Institutional subscriptions to individual journals can cost up to $20,000 today. Recent estimates indicate that profits for traditional journals are, on average, 40% in a $7.3 billion industry. Dr. Ian Gibson and his research commission have criticized traditional publishers’ pricing practices stating "They have shown no interest in engaging with the concerns of academics and libraries. Publishers are not interested in the benefit of science, they are thinking about their profits." Such discontent with the traditional business model for scholarly journals has led to the proposal of a new business model, the "open-access."

The open-access concept shifts the funding from the point of access or subscription fees to the point of dissemination or processing fees. This new business model for scholarly journals has gained support from scholars, universities, and funding agencies in recent years. According to surveys, many funding agencies are willing to allow direct use of their grants by researchers to cover article-processing fees. Learn more. For example, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Natural Environment Research Council, and Rockefeller Foundation—all allow use of their grants by researchers to cover article-processing fees.

This new model has triggered the most successful scholarly publishing reform movement in modern history. Traditional publishers have demonstrated hostility and skepticism at the initial phase of the movement. However, many of them are now overcoming their initial resistance, and have begun experimenting with the open-access model. In the traditional subscription model of publishing, the journal is exclusively available to subscribers for a fee. In open-access model, the article is freely available for all immediately upon publication. The open-access model has improved the circulation of knowledge, and has expanded its value by enhancing participation in a global exchange of ideas. Open-access makes knowledge freely available to all, regardless of whether the researcher or scholar is at Oxford or Yale, or at a small college in India, China or South Africa. To a large extent, the open-access movement is a reaction to the dysfunctional practices in the conventional scholarly publishing system.

Many leaders and advocates of the open-access movement are prominent scholars and librarians who are interested in developing more effective scholarly communication strategies. In explaining the inadequacies of the conventional scholarly communication system, Peter Suber, a leading voice in the open-access movement stated “It doesn't matter whether we blame unaffordable journals on excessive publisher prices or inadequate library budgets. If we focus on publishers, it doesn't matter whether we blame greed or innocent market forces (rising costs and new services). Blame is irrelevant and distracting. The volume of published knowledge is growing exponentially and will always grow faster than library budgets. In that sense, Open-access scales with the growth of knowledge and toll access does not. We've already (long since) reached the point at which even affluent research institutions cannot afford access to the full range of research literature. Priced access to journal articles would not scale with the continuing, explosive growth of knowledge even if prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever.”

Many scholars consider the traditional publishing system obsolete and believe that the future of scholarly publishing lies in the open-access model. Richard Roberts, a Nobel Laureate and Editor of NAR stated "Open access is the future of scientific publication and one that we should all work hard to make successful"

(http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/news/?issue=19).

The open-access model of scholarly publishing serves the interests of everyone. Open-access publishing offers the authors a worldwide audience larger than that of any subscription-based journal. The readers benefit because the open-access publishing provides them barrier-free access to the scientific literature they need for their own research as they are not constrained by the budgets of the libraries. Open-access publishing also helps solve the pricing crisis for scholarly journals. No library in the world can afford to subscribe to every scientific journal and most can only afford a small fraction of them. Many scholars believe that open access promises to remove both the "price barriers" and the "permission barriers" that undermine library efforts to provide access to the journal literature.

Open-access also makes research articles more visible, retrievable, and useful at the worldwide level. From the point of view of funding agencies, open-access publishing increases the return on their investment in research by making the results of the funded research more widely available. Moreover, it serves public funding agencies by providing public access to the results of publicly-funded research. From the citizen's perspective, open-access publishing offers them access to peer-reviewed research, most of which is not available in public libraries. It gives them access to government-funded research for which they have already paid through their taxes. It also helps them indirectly by helping the researchers, academics, physicians, and others who make use of cutting-edge research for their benefit. In other words, open access extends the reach of research beyond its immediate academic domain.

Why Open-Access Journals Charge Processing Fees

As mentioned above, the open-access concept shifts the funding from the point of access or subscription fees to the point of dissemination or processing fees for authors. Most open-access journals charge a processing fee only after a paper is accepted for publication. Like other open-access journals, our peer-reviewed journals provide free online access to full text articles. We do not charge subscription fees to readers or libraries. We cover the costs through article processing fees.

The processing fee keeps us alive. It costs money to maintain our offices, staff, databases, servers, electronic peer review systems, file transfer mechanisms, file workflow management, and the like. If an organization cannot generate sufficient revenues to pay its bills, it will not be able to sustain its operation and consequently, will have to close down its services.

As a small part of the cost of providing this service—the authors, universities, or funding agencies can pay a small processing fee to help cover the actual cost of the publication process. Many funding agencies, authors and institutions now support this view and are willing to help in the open-access publication process.

According to surveys carried out by BioMed Central in 2005, many funding agencies are willing to fund article processing charges (http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/funderpolicies/).
A recent survey of authors in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science (PNAS) found that nearly 50% of PNAS authors expressed a willingness to pay an “open-access surcharge” of $500 or more to make their papers available for free online immediately upon publication. This is above and beyond the $1,700 in page charges that the average PNAS author already pays (report available at
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/5/1111).

BioMed Central's processing fee ranges from $495 to $2365 for its various journals (http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq). Public Library of Science (PLoS) charges from $1250 to $2,500 for processing an article for its numerous journals (http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html). Some journals charge $20 to $150 per page for processing an article. NAR charges $1900 per article for non-members. PNAS charges an average of $1,500 for processing an article. Optics Express charges $450 for articles six pages and under, and $800 for articles over six pages.

For large publishers, such processing fee is necessary to cover the cost of producing an article. According to Wellcome Trust studies, an article production cost in the subscription model is estimated to be $2,750. The equivalent cost under the processing fee model is estimated to be $1,950, a saving of 30% on the costs, and a saving of 90% when the variable costs are compared (Details Available Here). However, SJI is a small publisher that does not have huge overhead and operating costs, and therefore is able to maintain a very low processing fee. Moreover, unlike some traditional and online journals, we do not charge a submission fee for reviewing a manuscript for publication consideration.

Suppression of New Ideas & Innovation

Human history is riddled with examples of innovations and research that had been suppressed and derogated by the leading science community and the accepted scientific conventions of the time. Throughout human history, many innovators became the victims of the insults of the skeptical scientific, governmental and corporate power elites.

Many innovators, scientists, and scholars know that disagreeing with the dominant view is risky, especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. When someone introduces a new innovation, presents an unconventional scientific view, or comes out with a new way of doing things that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body, representatives of that group attack the innovator's ideas and the innovator personally. Such attacks are carried out by censoring writing, blocking publications, withdrawing or denying grants, taking legal actions, and spreading false information or rumors.

What are the effects of suppression of new ideas, intellectual dissent, unconventional, or unpopular scientific views? Suppression is not only a denial of the open debate that is the foundation of a free society, it also creates artificial barriers and in effect retard innovation and creativity. Moreover, it has a chilling effect that breeds external censorship as well as self-censorship. If we can learn anything from the history of science, it is the dissidents and the unconventional thinkers who have spurred science on.

The following quotes and facts illustrate the initial hostile and trivializing attitude towards new ideas, scientific inquiries, and revolutionary innovations.

“I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged... and I was assured by other Senators after we left the room that they had no confidence in it." --Reaction of Senator Smith of Indiana after Samuel Mores demonstrated his telegraph before member of Congress in 1842.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs’ discovery of the metabolic cycle that would eventually bear his name was rejected from the journal Nature.

When Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar presented his ideas at the Royal Astronomical Society in January 1935, most famous astronomer at that time, Arthur Eddington, ridiculed his ideas. It took decades before the Chandrasekhar Limit was accepted by all astrophysicists and eventually his idea became the foundation for the theory of black holes. Forty years later, Chandrasekhar was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics.

Galileo’s ideas about the universe were first dismissed as being impossible. The priests and aristocrats feared the worldview that his ideas were beginning to force upon people. Galileo was placed under house arrest.

Nobel prize-winning biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi never got funded for his work on the relevance of quantum physics to living organisms.

As documented by Dr. Brian Martin of University of Wollongong, in his books and articles (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/), many scientists pursuing research critical of pesticides or proposing alternatives to pesticides have come under attack and have been threatened with dismissal and in some cases had been dismissed. Government scientists critical of nuclear power have lost their staff and have been transferred as a form of harassment.

When Nobel laureate Hans Alfven came up with the idea of parallel electric fields he was ridiculed for his work.

When Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius proposed his idea that electrolytes are full of charged atoms, it was considered a crazy notion.

“Mr. Bell, after careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities." -- J. P. Morgan's comments on behalf of the officials and engineers of Western Union after a demonstration of the telephone.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

Luigi Galvani's experiments were ridiculed because they countered established views. He was called the "frogs' dance instructor." His innovative experiments eventually became the basis for the biological study of neurophysiology.

When Scanning-tunneling microscope was invented in 1982, it was met by hostility and ridicule from the specialists in the microscopy field. In 1986, the inventors won the Nobel prize.

George Ohm's initial publication was met with ridicule and dismissal and it was called "a tissue of naked fantasy." Ten years later, scientists recognized its great importance.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" --H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

Stanford Ovshinsky's invention of glasslike semiconductors was attacked by physicists and ignored for more than a decade. Finally he got funding from the Japanese for his work. Consequently, the new science of amorphous semiconductor physics was born.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

When Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen first warned that chemicals called cholorofluorocarbons or CFCs, were destroying the ozone layer they were ridiculed for their work. In 1995, Rowland, Molina and Crutzen, won a Nobel Prize.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man." --G. B. Shaw.

In 1908 Billy Durant, in trying to raise money to create an automobile trust, boasted to J.P. Morgan & Co. "that the time would come when half a million automobiles a year will be running on the roads of this country." This annoyed Morgan partner George W. Perkins who said "If that fellow has any sense, he'll keep those observations to himself." Unable to raise capital in Wall Street, Durant went home and put together something called General Motors.

When Warren and his team introduced a new facet to MRI theory, his colleagues at Princeton told him that his insane ideas were endangering his career. They held a mean-spirited bogus presentation mocking his work. After seven years, Warren was vindicated. His discoveries are leading to the development of new MRI techniques.

During 1903 to 1908, Wrights' claims about their airplane invention were not believed. Most American scientists discredited the Wrights and proclaimed that their mechanism was a hoax.

The inventors of the turbine ship engine, the electric ships telegraph, and the steel ship hull were initially met with disbelief and derision for their work.

When Thomas Edison became successful with a light bulb filament he invited members of the scientific community to observe his demonstration. Although many from the general public went to witness the lamp, the noted scientists refused to attend. Sir William Siemens, England's most distinguished engineer said "Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress." Professor Du Moncel said "The Sorcerer of Menlo Park appears not to be acquainted with the subtleties of the electrical sciences. Mr. Edison takes us backwards."

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology, 1872.

"Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it." -- Albert Einstein.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."--Arthur Schopenhauer.

“At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.” -- Aldous Huxley.

"Every great advance in science has been issued from a new audacity of the imagination" --John Dewey.

"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next" --John Stuart Mill.

"Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created" --Albert Einstein.

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess"
--Isaac Newton.

"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time" --John Stuart Mill.

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."--Paul Johnson

"Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as "conceptual necessities", etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors." --Albert Einstein

"All great truths began as blasphemies." --George Bernard Shaw

Facts about Success & Failure

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall."
--Confucius

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and did not read until he was 7. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.

Sigmund Freud was booed from the podium when he first presented his ideas to the scientific community of Europe. He returned to his office and kept on writing.

Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive."

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff.

French acting legend Jeanne Moreau was told by a casting director that her "head was too crooked and she was not beautiful enough to make it in films." She said to herself, "I guess I will have to make it my own way." After making nearly 100 films her own way, in 1997 she received the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sidney Poitier was told by a casting director, "Why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?" It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting.

Beethoven's teacher called him "hopeless as a composer." We all know that he wrote some of his greatest symphonies while completely deaf.

Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life. This did not stop him from completing over 800 paintings.

An art dealer refused Picasso shelter when he asked if he could bring in his paintings from out of the rain.

Stravinsky was run out of town by an enraged audience and critics after the first performance of the Rite of Spring.

A young reporter asked Pablo Casals when he was 95 "Mr. Casals, you are 95 and the greatest cellist that ever lived, why do you still practice six hours a day?" Mr. Casals answered, "Because I think I'm making progress."

Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college. He was described as both "unable and unwilling to learn."

Emily Dickinson had only seven poems published in her lifetime.

English crime novelist John Creasey had 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost 16 years after losing his eyesight.


	ISSN 1556-6757