Guest blog: Why I publish Open Access - BMC series blog

"Decreasing funding rates from federal and non-governmental agencies have forced researchers to closely evaluate how finite funds are allocated. With a shift to a user pays model, authors are now forced to allocate not insubstantial funds to publishing charges.  While this is nothing new – page charges have been around for decades – the ubiquity of Open Access fees means that researchers must budget in several thousand dollars for publication.* One way this pressure may be alleviated is by altering the funding structure of grant proposals.  By researchers explicitly requesting funds for publication in Open Access formats they can make the case that their outcomes will reach a broader audience and have a greater influence.  Of course simply asking for more money may not be the most reliable strategy and more autochthonous methods of reallocation may be in order. This may result in scientists publishing fewer but more elaborate papers, publishing with more partners (thus spreading the publishing cost over a greater field of authors) or choosing to publish with journals that have fixed yearly costs. By choosing to publish in an Open Access journal scientists are able to expand both their impact and their potential collaborative network. Making ones research more widely available means that more eyes, in more countries, are reading that work. This establishes the potential for unique and more wide-ranging collaborations, especially with labs in developing countries. In addition, by lowering barriers to engagement with government agencies, researchers are also more likely to translate their work into policy action. I have written elsewhere about how publishing in an Open Access format can help further conservation biology. From my perspective as a researcher and conservation biologist I would only add that the major strength of publishing in an Open Access format is that it allows for the democratization of science, putting the information in the hands of managers so that they have the most current data to make informed conservation decisions. 'To me there is something fundamentally inequitable about a manager in Papua New Guinea, for example, not being able to access a paper written about reefs she can see from her office, because that paper is published in a journal that her institution cannot afford...'"