InTech Open Access publisher is among the first to publish Open Access books and it is, moreover, the biggest publisher of Open Access scholarly books.
So, what is the difference between an Open Access Book and an Open Access Journal?
In Scholarly Terms
Publishing of an Open Access journal is an apt method for collecting shorter papers which describe various burning topics. Released monthly, quarterly or yearly, a journal is an output for results for which it is crucial that they are published in the nick of time. Journals often have subsidies from institutions like laboratories and universities and today, they make 22% of world’s scholarly journal collection.
However, such journal articles are not a part of a wider collection of papers which deal with similar topic and are presented per se. The book which is a collection of chapters which deal with one specific topic may serve as a medium more mighty in casting the new light on a fixed issue. A conducted research may be revised more thoroughly and valued more correctly when compared with similar researches in the same field.
For educational purposes, to make an inquiry about assigned subject, one would need to search through many different journals to find relevant articles. To have it all compiled at one place shortens the research process and makes a single reference point worth many. On average, twenty chapters per book are published. In addition, the chapters are usually much longer than journal articles, which allows for a more insightful approach to the subject matter. This may present a counter-balance to the suggested time preservation but then again, ten well elaborated assumptions may be as useful as double the number of shortened explanations. The book always serves as a good start point for further research and a referring point to which you always come back.
The Journal and the Book: The Race and the Paradox
The publishing of the book has always been a process slower than the publishing of the journal. This is the Achilles-Tortoise nature of the process. However, the same as tortoise approaches by constantly splitting the distance from Achilles, the Open Access Book approaches the journal in the publishing race. Time delay may prove inconsiderable in a digital age. At InTech, we are working on optimizing technical and organizational efficiency of the publishing process. Technical fouls must disappear completely from the process and the organization skills of the publishing process managers must prove impeccable. The idea is to shorten the time of publishing significantly with the length of the process depending solely on authors and single editor who is responsible for overall quality of the book.
Newly launched, InTechOpen reading platform serves as a digital home for an ever growing number of 200 books and over 8,000 scholarly articles and chapters published by InTech.
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