At the begining of 2009, there was a big news running through our scholary publishing community in Japan, that the Scoeity of Polymer Science Japan (12,000 members, established 1951) has decided to transfer their publishing platform of “Polymer Journal” (http://www.spsj.or.jp/c5/pj/pj.htm) to Nature Publishing Group, from 2010. [January 8, 2009]
The journal will meet its 40th publishing anniversary in 2010, and will be shifted to a site-licensing model from the Society-sponsored OA model. The journal has been published on the J-Stage (hosted by Japanese agency, JST) since Vol.1 of 1970, and available free of charge.
It should give strong impact to publishing organizations and aggregators based in Japan. It is ‘healthy’ situation for Japanese societies and academics to be able to chose the best partner and platform to publish own journals. On the other hand, there is a slight sadness to see a decreasing number of publishing “territory” of Japan in bibliometric databases. Perhaps, Japanese scientists do not consider such cultural transitions in the global-border-less era.
Publishing in Japan 