eScholarship Journal Spotlight: Electronic Green Journal

By admin / April 8, 2025

In this new University of California (UC) Office of Scholarly Communication blog series, we highlight the successes and challenges of leading journals published by UC’s eScholarship Publishing program through interviews with journal editors. Our latest interview is with two editors of the Electronic Green Journal: Editor-In-Chief, Maria A. Jankowska (UCLA Librarian Emerita) and Managing Editor and Book Review Editor, Kelsey Brown, (UCLA Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian). The journal recently celebrated its 30th anniversary of publication!

In a few sentences, describe the origin/focus/purpose of your journal:

The history of the journal began in 1991, when a group of environmental enthusiasts from the Green Library in Berkeley and the University of Idaho Library decided to disseminate and share environmental information to promote sustainable scholarly communication and environmental literacy. They concluded that the best tool for this knowledge sharing would be the creation of a professional journal. This idea led to the launch of the Green Library Journal: Environmental Topics in the Information World (GLJ) in print. The journal provided a platform for sharing current research, bibliographies, book reviews, opinions, and information sources on environmental and sustainability topics.

When funding was no longer available to support GLJ, Maria A. Jankowska, the founder and general editor, decided in the summer of 1994 to transition the publication to an electronic format. She launched and distributed the Electronic Green Journal (EGJ), initially via Gopher and later on the web; according to Peter Suber’s timeline of the open-access movement, EGJ was one of the earliest free online, peer-reviewed journals. In 2008, EGJ moved from the University of Idaho Library to the UCLA Library, where it began publication with eScholarship.

Since its launch, the journal has followed the Diamond/Platinum Open Access Model, meaning there are no fees for either readers or authors. The primary goal of EGJ is to facilitate international academic environmental communication by providing a high-quality, unbiased, and freely accessible forum for the exchange of environmental information.

Why does open access matter in your field?

Libraries promote sustainable scholarship by exploring alternative models of scholarly communication, including support for institutional repositories, open-access publishing, data curation and preservation, author rights, and open educational resources. With the rising costs of commercial resources, libraries are increasingly advocating for and implementing alternative publishing solutions beyond traditional subscriptions.

How does eScholarship support your goals for this publication?

UC’s eScholarship Publishing promotes equitable access and sustainability at the University of California by challenging the commercial publishing model, implementing alternative approaches to scholarly communication, and advancing open-access platforms to facilitate the broad dissemination of knowledge. Additionally, through the long-term preservation of content using the Merritt Preservation Repository, eScholarship supports the EGJ’s goal of promoting sustainable scholarship.

EGJ publishes a significant number of articles from international authors and universities with smaller collection budgets. Thanks to eScholarship and its open-access model, our articles reach a wider audience and support research conducted by peer institutions. Publishing through eScholarship enhances the visibility of EGJ, while also providing our journal with valuable assistance from eScholarship staff in technical troubleshooting and navigating complicated issues like copyright infringement.

What challenges does your publication face?

Small, independently operated journals like ours can face technical challenges in transitioning their publications to new platforms and adopting new tools and best practices over time.

All of our editors are dedicated volunteers driven by a passion for open access and environmental issues. Despite being a small journal, we are receiving increased submissions from around the world. This growing visibility and engagement leads to the challenge experienced by many peer-reviewed journals: finding a sufficient number of qualified and available reviewers.

How do you measure success?

The journal’s usage statistics, including article downloads, continue to grow. Our global reach is demonstrated by international authorship and readership. According to the WorldCat FirstSearch database, EGJ is listed in 1,407 library catalogs worldwide. It is also indexed by EBSCOhost, ProQuest Central, and Scopus.

Over the past 30 years, EGJ has published environmental research from 26 countries. The top six contributing countries are the United States (96 articles), Canada (15), Australia (15), India (14), the United Kingdom (7), and Nigeria (5). Submissions come from 157 institutions, the vast majority of which are universities, libraries, government organizations, and research centers.

Since 1994, EGJ has evolved from a local library publication into an international platform for scholarly communication on environmental and sustainability topics. This transition is reflected in the increasing number of citations, with more than 4,000 scholarly works referencing top-cited articles published in EGJ.

How does the future look for Electronic Green Journal?

Authors who publish with EGJ achieve success through high citation metrics and broad readership across both scholarly and nonacademic audiences. Usage statistics indicate that articles published in EGJ retain their value, with older issues being accessed as frequently as more recent ones. Additionally, authors often maintain a relationship with the journal—following their initial success, many authors of top-cited articles chose to publish with EGJ again.

EGJ advances the role of academic libraries in sustainability initiatives by publishing quality research on environmental topics, disseminating free international information to all users, and providing alternative access to costly commercial sources. Looking ahead, EGJ will continue to serve as a strong example of entrepreneurship in the library world, showcasing librarians’ active role in shaping an open access model of scholarly communication.