Two journals merged to create a powerfull media for open access academic publishing in construction IT.

Due to the general development of the Internet and of Scientific Electronic Publishing in particular refereed journal publishing is currently undergoing fundamental changes resulting in increasing demand from the academic community for open access to journal articles. In line with this development the editors of ITcon and IT-AEC have decided to merge the two journals in order to create a strong Open Access journal devoted to Information and Communication Technology in Construction research.

This merger brings together the already strongly overlapping research communities which have worked on publishing the two journals as editors, guest editors of special issues, reviewers and authors. Professor Anumba has been appointed co-editor of ITcon and the editorial boards of the two journals have been merged. The new journal builds on the proven strength of the “Open Source” like actions of the scientific community itself, bypassing inefficient commercial intermediaries in allowing scientists to communicate their results directly and efficiently to other researchers as well as practitioners.

The merger is put into effect immediately. The new journal continues to use the name Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon) which over its ten year’s history has both proved the viability of the Open Access publishing model for this scientific community as well as established itself as a quality brand. ITcon is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals currently listing over 1500 such journals and articles are easy to find in full text using general Web search engines. Regular readers are also served by email alerts about new articles call for special issues etc.

by Bo-Christer Bjork on 2005/09/15 20:59.