What is open access? Why is it so important? Should you be publishing in open access (also called OA) or should you be publishing traditionally?
There are so many questions when it comes to open access publishing as a concept, so here we’ll do our best to go over two primary questions:
What is open access and why does open access publishing matter?
By knowing the answer to these two questions, researchers, authors and academics can make an informed decision when it comes to publishing.
The origins of open access
OA’s history is a little bit hazy. In fact, the idea of this sort of approach to academic publishing goes back decades. As relates to the internet, the origins usually are attributed to one of two things: self-archiving and ftp archives and/or self-archiving arXiv. Which of these origins a person believes is the right one doesn’t matter as much as what they both represent. The idea that journal articles can be made available, online, for free. OA just came a bit later.
This term was formalized in the early 2000s. As covered on Wikipedia, open access was mentioned in the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
The concept, established with a bit more structure in the 2000s, continued to quickly expand and grow. Publishing in OA has now become one of the most important academic movements in the last century.
Current day open access
So, what open access is now has evolved from so many years ago. Now, it is one of the dominant academic publishing formats in the world. It is the vehicle by which research is made freely available to all. It doesn’t matter if the reader is an academic, part of a university’s staff, a journalist, or a high school student. All research published in open access is available to all at no cost.
But how is all this research made available for free?
The cost of publication used to be covered by journals, which in turn would make money off subscriptions. Institutions and companies (and the occasional individual) would pay for access to the journal. If only one article was needed, access to that article could be bought for less than a full subscription. Journals were thus more limited in terms of how many articles could be produced.
With open access, the authors (more on this in a moment) cover the cost associated with publication. This is generally referred to as an “article processing charge” or “APC”.
What do APCs do?
Instead of operating on a subscription service, the fees for publication are covered up front. These are covered by the authors of the research, though in many cases, they are actually paid for by the institutions that the authors belong to.
Article processing charges cover the various costs associated with publishing content. Since open access became a major player in the academic publishing world, there have been criticisms of these article processing charges. While some have called it a “pay to publish” medium, many journals take their academic and publishing integrity very seriously.
But salaries and rent need to be paid for at the end of the day, and if one is making research freely available, funding needs to come from somewhere. These article processing charged, while they are paid by authors and institutions, in turn benefit all the authors and institutions (and more) that have free access to the research.
Why does OA matter?
It can actually be very difficult to single out one thing that makes open access “matter”. It actually changes quite a lot of things in the academic landscape.
Open access revolutionized the publishing industry in many critical ways, and there are quite a number of benefits that publishing in OA brings to the table. First of all, and most importantly, it empowers researchers around the world by making knowledge freely available to everyone. Removing barriers to knowledge can foster collaboration an accelerate research. But it isn’t just academics that benefit. Policy makers also have free access to research and knowledge that can help guide stakeholders to better decisions within their own communities. Academics, however, see other benefits. From higher citations to the general democratization of knowledge, academics and researchers can build on the knowledge that came before more easily.
One of the simplest way to view the benefits of OA is that they lower (or remove) barriers. With so many different institutions, people, and organizations around the world, different people benefit differently from open access. For example, open access impacts cutting-edge research and helping to balance out the playing field for the Global South are knock-down impacts of the spread of open access.
Cutting-edge research
Time can make all the difference in the world. Ideas need to be published quickly, especially when faced with crises. While preprints, for example, are not peer-reviewed, that knowledge can be vastly beneficial to the world in the event of important events. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, was a once-in-a-generation event. Had research results been published in traditional formats, vaccines and treatments may have taken significantly longer to be produced.
The speed of publication and dissemination with open access are one of its most powerful benefits.
How open access helps the Global South
Many scholars and institutions in the Global South simply do not have access to the resources that are available to many countries. Getting work published in books and journals can be extremely challenging when faced with such barriers.
In addition to questions related to resources, even the reputation of an institution can have an impact on getting published. Open access, however, can balance this out in a number of ways. Higher citations can be achieved through OA, and many journals are aware of the challenges faced by institutions in the Global South and have programs to help.
Does open access matter to all academia?
In short, yes, it can. As we noted above, it can have very far reaching impacts on a diverse range of stakeholders. But, at it’s core, open access has the ability to democratize scientific communication.
There is more fairness.
There is more accountability.
Research isn’t hidden behind paywalls.
Errors are found more quickly and reputations are thus impacted.
From citations to academic rankings, open access has shown itself to be a powerful tool. But beyond these important factors, OA is far-reaching and can affect many institutions beyond “publishers” and “universities”. Even the ethics of open access are of critical importance and are being discussed all around he world.
For example, the ROSiE project in Europe that aims to foster responsible OA. What are the ROSiE project’s aims?
- Identify novel ethical and legal issues, as well as new forms of misconduct and questionable practices brought about by open science.
- Analyse them in the context of existing ethical and legal frameworks.
- Pinpoint gaps and grey areas.
- Integrate ethics and research integrity in open science and citizen science as a structural component.
Clearly the desire to improve on OA to make a brighter future for all is there.
Why does open access matter for preprints?
While not a “traditional” publishing format, preprints represent a continued evolution of academic publishing. Much like academic journals, preprints have also been impacted by open access in meaningful ways.
Simply put, preprints being published in open access facilitates the spread of research findings. It removes barriers to access important (sometimes critical) research, but allows careful records of ownership to exist. This makes it possible for the world to make massive advancements in knowledge in a short period of time. The transition to a peer-reviewed journal can also be straightforward. If you want to learn more about friendly journals that are preprint-friendly, we encourage further reading on the subject.
Because preprints are multidisciplinary in nature, they offer a vast range of information very quickly. For example, for Preprints.org, the time from submission to being online is about 24 hours. This means that the speed of dissemination, early visibility, collaboration, and even feedback come quickly.
While preprints are not peer-reviewed, they are still screened and made available publicly. This helps in finding inconsistencies and problems in research, while allowing countless others to benefit from accurate information. To learn more about preprints, take a look at our FAQ!
