First Monday (journal)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

First Monday is a monthly, peer‑reviewed, open‑access academic journal about the Internet. It is published in the United States and hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The journal began in 1995–1996 and publishes on the first Monday of every month. It has no article processing charges and no advertisements.

Edward J. Valauskas is the editor‑in‑chief. The journal is known for being an early open‑access publication, with authors keeping copyright and content freely available to encourage sharing and reuse.

Origins: In 1995, Valauskas proposed an Internet‑only, peer‑reviewed journal to the Danish publisher Munksgaard. Munksgaard agreed to publish it, and the first issue appeared on May 6, 1996, coinciding with the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference in Paris. The first issue was distributed on diskette at the conference and also released online from a server in Copenhagen.

In December 1998, Munksgaard sold the journal to three editors: Valauskas, Esther Dyson, and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. The server moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago Library, and the first Chicago‑based issue appeared on January 4, 1999.

The first First Monday conference took place November 4–6, 2001, in Maastricht. To celebrate the journal’s 10th birthday, a conference was held May 15–17, 2006 at UIC. More than 200 participants from over 30 countries attended, and the papers were published in the June and July 2006 issues. Sponsors included The Open Society Institute, The MacArthur Foundation, UIC Library, and MERIT (Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology).