NMI, established in 2021, is a non-commercial, open-access, peer-reviewed journal with no publication fee. Therefore, it qualifies as a Diamond Open Access journal. The journal publishes original research articles, literature reviews, conference articles related to NORA's Norwegian and Nordic conferences, articles related to the NMI Challenge, statements, and other educational material within all aspects of artificial intelligence.
As stated by Plan S, open access is foundational to the scientific enterprise. The Research Council of Norway is part of cOAlition S, a group of national research funding organizations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), with announced an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and ten principles. Lately, it has been a debate as most journals that had commitments under Plan S didn't achieve their targets in 2021. Journals that fail to fulfil their commitments in 2022 will be removed from the program. Curt Rice, Rector of NMBU, stated in his tweet, "[it's] good for science that [Plan S] takes a strong approach to dealing with these. I trust [Norwegian Research Council] will be just as tough." However, NMI fulfils all requirements set by Plan S and even more. It is a journal owned by the community, it is all based on voluntary work, and publishing is free of charge. This makes the journal a so-called Diamond Open Access journal.
The editorial team is led by Anne Håkansson (UiT – The Arctic University of Tromsø), with Bjørn-Jostein Singstad doing a fantastic job as the journal manager. The editorial team was, of course, delighted to receive the message that the journal is now recognized as a level 1 journal. Michal Riegler. They all agree that the journal has international potential. As Michael Riegler (SIMULA) puts it: "I think this journal will not just be an important platform for the Nordic countries but also has the potential to achieve international success due to its focus on high quality and reproducibility. "
Stefano Nichele (Østfold University College) points out that the journal may also be seen in the light of Norway's national strategy for AI. "NORA's journal Nordic Machine Intelligence provides a publication channel of high level, open access and free of charge for publishers and readers. The NMI journal is a step towards the goals set by the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence to strengthen the Norwegian and Nordic AI environments.»
Morten Goodwin (University of Agder) couldn't agree more: "With such a promising AI proficiency the Nordics are building up, it has been unfortunate that there has not been a high-quality journal close to home. Many solid academic AI teams in the Nordics have had limited possibilities to publish their excellent papers here in Scandinavia. Until now. Finally, we have the opportunity to direct internationally high-standard academic results to Nordic Machine Intelligence."
This articles was originally published on the 29th of June, 2022.