Editorial Statement: The challenge of research performance and the promises of open access (OA)

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/bethunivj.38.2021.0090
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Pages: 90-94
• Author: Jamil Khader

90 Bethlehem University Journal 38 (2021)

Editorial Statement

The challenge of research performance and the promises of

open access (OA)

Prof Jamil Khader

This volume marks the publication of the rst volume of Bethlehem University

Journal as an Open-Access (OA) journal on Jstor, one of the largest and most

reputable international digital platforms of academic journals and books in the

world. This transition to OA makes access to BUJ completely free to readers and

authors all over the world. Such a transition has already left an indelible impact

on BUJ and its local and global status. Monthly usage reports issued by Jstor,

and veried by an independent audit, reveal an upward trend in access to BUJ

across our reader base and an exponential increase in the total number of article

requests, downloads, searches, result clicks and record views.

The transition of BUJ to OA will have signicant implications not only for the

reputation of the journal and its future sustainability as a leading journal in the

region. More importantly, this transition will make BUJ an important part of the

global effort to provide a more equitable system of knowledge and information

for students and researchers in Palestine and other countries in the global South.

OA makes it possible for these students and researchers to have free, unrestricted

and immediate access to the latest research in the different disciplines. One

cannot emphasize enough the positive impact of such access on the research

performance, productivity and visibility of researchers from the global South in

the global conversations about knowledge production in the various elds.

A recent study of higher education and research in Palestine (Isaac et al.,

2019) documents the unsatisfactory level and status of research across all the

disciplines at Palestinian universities, but does not develop or recommend a

national strategy for making scholarly production especially, academic journals,

open access. The study discusses the importance and urgency of producing

specialized and high-quality journals at Palestinian universities and research

centers and places a special emphasis on indexing these journals in international

abstract and citation databases such as Scopus and Web of Science (59). The