Making the Choice: Open Access vs. Traditional Journals

"In modern society, research is disseminated through many venues, including social media sites, blogs, Twitter, and open access (OA) scholarly journals that are freely available to anyone with Internet access. As opposed to traditional journals, which often charge readers hefty fees to access journal content, OA journals provide content for free on the web and charge researchers to publish their findings. Although the idea of a journal that is freely available to the public with no financial barriers to access seems great in theory, when it comes time to publish, many researchers struggle with the decision of whether to do so in an OA journal versus a traditional (and perhaps more well-established) journal. The four main factors to consider when making this decision are visibility, cost, prestige, and speed ..."