On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the Jane Bancroft Cook library held a reception to honor the collaboration with the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens to present the Selbyana journal, a peer-reviewed research journal for botanists. In the past the Selbyana journal has been published only in printed form. However, with the publication of vol. 33 on Mar. 20, 2019, the journal is now exclusively available online. The reception was attended by faculty and members of the Selby Botanical Gardens board.

“Selbyana is a journal thats been published by the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens for about 40 years, that has, up until this point, been published in traditional format, in subscription analog journal,” Librarian Cal Murgu said. “We’ve converted it into an open access digital publication that is accessible worldwide without any subscription fees.”

The collaboration with Selby Botanical Gardens is thanks to efforts from Murgu and Professor of Biology Brad Oberle. Oberle serves as a Research Scholar Associate Editor of the Selbyana journal and together with Murgu, talks with Selby Botanical Gardens went over smoothly. New College has agreed to continuously support the publication so long as Selby Botanical Gardens continues to work with the school.

“I had been talking to professor Oberle about opportunities to collaborate with community partners,” Murgu said. “He brought everybody together. From there we organically collaborated and decided to help each other out. In terms of resourcing, there’s a lot on both sides that are being committed to this project, but it’s also a really fun project to work on.”

Access to research journals and papers can be restricted or limited by publication companies that set up pay-walls to gain profit off the work of researchers. Often, the researchers themselves receive no compensation. The open access availability of the Selbyana journal will allow everyone to use the journal for free.

For access to the Selbyana journal head to https://journals.flvc.org/selbyana/index