The site FreeFullText.com “provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by ANYONE with Internet access for free.” Unfortunately, most of them only offer a sample issue, but a number of them, like the Journal of Islamic Studies, allow you to see abstracts of all articles, which gives you an idea of what’s going on in the field, and some, like Linguistic Discovery, put everything out there for all comers. (Via wood s lot.)
Linguistic Discovery looks like an interesting journal, and I’m happy to have found it. From the Editorial Statement:
We are pleased to launch a new journal, Linguistic Discovery, which is dedicated to the description and analysis of primary linguistic data. The amazing linguistic diversity of our planet poses a great intellectual challenge to linguists as we attempt to define what aspects of language and language use are universal versus those which are particular to subsets of the world’s languages. Linguistic Discovery provides a platform for linguists to explore these issues and to inform others about linguistic phenomena that deepen our understanding of language, as well our appreciation for it. The journal will be published at least two times per year.
In the previous two decades, linguists have become increasingly aware that linguistic diversity is in rapid decline. While there is some disagreement over the specific role that the professional linguist should play in any community’s struggle to maintain or expand the use of its heritage language, all agree that linguists are uniquely suited to the task of accurately documenting and describing the world’s languages. To this end, Linguistic Discovery aims for all of its articles to contain original or hard-to-access data, including cross-linguistic studies whose novelty may not be in the individual pieces of data described, but in the data base.
While there are a number of specialized journals that cater to the study of a given language or language family, few journals publish for a broad readership on a range of different languages. We believe that exposure to diverse linguistic data is critical for theorizing. Despite widespread agreement with this claim, many journals remain relatively narrow in the sets of languages analyzed and the theoretical topics covered. For this reason, Linguistic Discovery has a particular bias toward lesser-studied languages and phenomena.
Interesting you mention this… I just noticed a mention on Slashdot that Nature is publishing a series of articles on the debate over Open Access Publishing. From nature.com:
More here: http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/
Worm Eater: Thanks for that link!!! It is an issue that I am very interested in.
Thanks for the link, It looks like a useful resource.