My change of heart about open access journals… we can do better | Notes from the research frontier

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-11-03

Summary:

"I have changed my mind about open access journals recently, and simultaneously confirmed that I am a naive optimist. The open access movement is unfortunately prone to the cynical profit-driven culture of the publishing world – which open access activists deplore. I fear that we are still far from an ideal open access model. Research, especially if it is publicly funded, should be openly accessible to all who want to use it. As a philosophy, open access knowledge contributes to a better environment for researchers. It is simply a more constructive and interactive approach to knowledge production. It is pro-scientific and pro-knowledge to want to share findings and discuss them openly. Much of research in academia is carried out by an elite, within elite organizations who have access to restricted knowledge, and thus a lot of power. That power can lead to preventing some research and knowledge from entering into the elite system – so ultimately researchers and the public lose out. I always think about the policy-maker or researcher working on a shoestring somewhere remote, with no comfy university library or easy wifi connection – and with no subscription to journals. Open-access publications are especially important for those people out on the frontiers. In so far as its possible, research publications should be freely accessible, and the move in the UK and elsewhere driven by funding agencies to make open-access a prerequisite is a good thing overall.  I was very much a supporter of open access journals where the authors pay for their paper to be made available to all – but I am now back-tracking in that support. I don’t think that we have the publication model right yet.  I have seen the model more closely having (very) briefly done some editorial work for a well-established open access journal recently. My observations made me realize that I had naively forgotten about the money-making motivations of most publishers not least the open access ones. The motivation within these journals is still ultimately to make money, and they do so by accepting papers and getting the authors to pay for them. To be fair, many of the best open access journals have a separate process from the standard peer-review one, to enable authors to request article fee waivers. For authors this means that the reviewing and ensuing decision on your paper should not be linked to your ability to pay. This is something I found reassuring, and encouraged me to submit, review and do editorial work for open access journals.  Except, what I discovered is that such journals also have an 'inclusive' policy. This means that it is actually very difficult to have your paper rejected by an open access journal. It is only under extreme circumstances that need to be explicitly argued for, that a paper can be rejected with no further re-submission possible ..."

Link:

http://researchfrontier.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/my-change-of-heart-about-open-access-journals-we-can-do-better/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.gold oa.fees oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.peer_review oa.policies oa.journals

Date tagged:

11/03/2014, 15:02

Date published:

11/03/2014, 10:02