The future of open access, open science, and research dissemination - Gennaro - 2023 - Journal of Nursing Scholarship - Wiley Online Library

"With increases in open access publishing, the “success criteria” for a journal will move from journal-focused metrics (like the impact factor) to article-focused metrics such as those endorsed by the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA, 2023). Journal-level metrics do not tell us anything about the quality or contributions of individual papers or authors. Citation metrics can also be skewed by a single well-cited paper. This has been noticeable with the so-called COVID bump after a surge in research and papers during the pandemic (Petrou, 2021).

While the impact factor (IF) is still an important indicator, under open research and DORA, the goal is to ensure that the IF is not the only metric taken into account....

Under open access models, publishers make money through article processing charges (APC), but who pays for these charges?....

The old subscription model encourages membership in order to have access to the society's journals (in which Sigma's case are consistently ranked by members among the top benefits). No membership means no access—unless your institution or organization subscribe to the journals on their own.

Open access models upend this by replacing subscription revenue with APCs. Open access means a move away from the traditional subscription model to an article-based economy. Simply put, the more a publisher or a society publishes, the more revenue is generated. However, by making articles freely available to all, open access also risks reducing a society's value proposition to members. While many societies like Sigma offer other services that provide value for members, making one of the most popular offerings freely available to non-members could become an existential problem if membership declines and a substantial amount of dues-based revenue is lost....

Open access is here to stay, and it is up to us to figure out how best to support the rapid dissemination of good science throughout the world. We all benefit from this openness, and we need to continue to develop the models that will ensure that open access, and thus open science, works."