Publishing through Open Access: Myths and Truths

Myth: Articles in Open Access journals are not peer-reviewed, are of lower quality, and are the equivalent of self-publication.

Truth

• Most Open Access journals are peer-reviewed, and are of a high quality. However, Open Access journals, just like any traditional paid journal, can be peer-reviewed or not. The fact that a journal is OA tells us nothing about whether or not it is peer-reviewed. Both traditional subscription journals and Open Access journals should be evaluated for quality before manuscripts are submitted - like all other journals, the journal website will tell you information about the publishing and peer-review process they undertake.
• Remember that most Open Access journals are affiliated with academic institutions. For example, the Journal of Religion and Film, is an Open Access peer-reviewed journal that adheres to the platinum standard for Open Access and is published at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. 

• Judge the quality of Open Access journals and articles the same way you would any other, by reading the content and examining the information they give on their website.
• Consider the impact of Open Access articles' demonstrated increased usage when you choose where to publish.

Resources

• For a more in-depth look at journal quality including impact factors, please refer to this guide from the University of Nebraska: Assessing Journal Quality.

• More than one hundred BioMed Central journals now have impact factors

  "The 2010 edition of Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Reports, released on June 28th 2011, provides further evidence that Open Access journals are delivering not only high visibility but also high rates of citation and impact. Altogether, 101 BioMed Central journals now have official impact factors. 21 journals recorded their first impact factors this year. Meanwhile, among the 80 journals which already had impact factors, 53 increased while only 27 declined."

• Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography

  This annotated bibliography lists studies and review articles that examine whether Open Access articles receive more citations than equivalent subscription; i.e., toll access (TA) articles. 

Source, source.

Myth: it is expensive for an author to publish through Open Access.

Truth:

It is important to remember that Open Access journals do not have one business model, and in reality Open Access journals do not charge publication fees at all. 67% of peer-reviewed Open Access journals do not charge a fee to publish. When they do, these are called Article Processing Charges. It is hybrid or Gold Open Access routes that require APCs. Only 12% of authors pay for the fees themselves.

Open Access journals make research free to read while covering overhead costs through funder backing. Some Open Access journals do utilise APCs as a business model to make profit, however authors can request that the fee be waived if they do not have the funding to pay it. Remember to write in potential APC costs to your grant proposals if you are considering publishing in a hybrid or Gold Open Access journal. 

IADT Library has an agreement through IReL to support hybrid publishing. Please get in touch for more information infolib@iadt.ie.

Source, source, source.

Myth: If I publish OA I'll be giving up all my copyright

Truth

This is often not true. If you transferred your copyright to the publisher at the time of publication, as most authors do, the publisher may restrict your right to re-use the content in teaching and publication.

Just because a work is published Open Access does not mean that copyright is not at play. In fact Open Access promotes the retention of author copyrights, rather than transferring those rights to publishers.  Many publishers and authors will utilise Creative Commons Licenses, which are copyright licenses, to customise how they prefer their work to reused and/or shared by others. Creative Commons licences are available under Gold Open Access model which allow you to specify what can be done with your work.

Remedies

• Publish in an Open Access publication so that everyone immediately and always has free access to your work.
• Publish in a journal that allows you to retain the rights you need to re-use your own work in teaching and publication.
• Read publisher agreements carefully to ensure you retain your copyright and if needed add an addendum to your contract so that you keep your copyrights.  Learn more about Creative Commons and how it can help you share and protect your work. 
• Negotiate the specific rights that you need at the time of publication.

Resources

• SHERPA/RoMEO

Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.

• SPARC Author Addendum

  Secure your rights as the author of a journal article.

• Creative Commons

  Learn what each Creative Commons license does and use their "Choose a License" feature to discover which license is best for you or your work.

Source, source

Myth: If I want to publish through Open Access I have to publish in an Open Access journal - I cannot submit my work to my preferred/a traditional journal.

Truth

Open access publishing can happen a couple of ways:

• Authors can publish their work in an Open Access journal.
• Authors can published in hybrid journals, but must pay an Article Publishing Charge (APC) in order to make the article Open Access.
• Authors can publish in any journal and retain the right in the publisher agreement to make a version of your work available in an Open Access repository, such as IADT's Institutional Repository, Illustro.

Resources: 

Do some research on publication venues before submitting to ensure you have the the option of making your work Open Access.  A good practice is to include article processing costs (APCs) in any grant proposals so that you can cover that cost with grant money. DOAJ is a great directory of Open Access journals, all of which must exercise peer-review or editorial quality control to be included. See below for a few more resources to help find Open Access avenues for your work. 

• Open Access Publishing Agreements

  Your organisations library may have a publishing agreement to allow for publication of an Open Access article with the APC waived. In Ireland this is most likely agreed through IReL.IADT Library is included in this - we have an agreement through IReL to support hybrid publishing. Please get in touch for more information infolib@iadt.ie.

• SherpaRomeo

  Use the Sherpa/RoMEO website to find a journal or publisher's standard policy on retention of copyright by authors.
  The entry for each publisher lists conditions or restrictions imposed by the publisher on authors' rights to deposit their articles in Open Access repositories.

• Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine

  Generates a custom addendum to a publisher's contract reserving the rights you need.

• The following guide goes through everything authors need to know when it comes to copyright and negotiating their rights, including how to write an addendum to a publishing agreement. Guide: Authors and Copyright from Washington University.

Source

You can submit and publish your article in any journal you like and still make it available Open Access in a research repository. You just need to plan for this in advance by having a publishing agreement that allows for this - see links above.

Source

Myth: Academic research has impact and value only if published in traditional subscription journals.

Truth

More than 76% of electronic scholarly documents are not freely accessible to the public and nearly 50% of papers are solely read only by the authors, peer reviewers, and editors due to the lack of public access (source).

Paywalls prevent access and discovery of these works.  Open Access increases discoverability by making access to scholarly research freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection, which ultimately increases the research's impact and reach.

Impact factors is a proprietary term that only applies to journals in the Web of Science databases managed by Clarivate, so it is an incomplete measure of impact.  True impact is the ability of work to be accessible and discoverable increasing the chances of that work to be read and cited, therefore increasing the impact of that work.  Open Access journals allow more people to access and discover research because of the lack of restricted access, hence increasing the impact of work published Open Access.

There are other tools that can be used to measure impact of your research and work.  The following resources are just a few to consider. 

• Altmetric

  Altmetric offers a way to measure impact. Instead of focusing on traditional citation counts, Altmetric collects metrics from alternative resources like social media. The Altmetric Bookmarklet is a free tool that enables you to easily assess and share these metrics. In addition to this, Altmetric also offers free Badges for Individual Researchers that can be embedded into CVs or personal websites to visually represent these metrics.

• Impactstory

  Impactstory is an open-source platform that helps you track your research’s impact across a number of platforms. Whereas GoogleScholar deals with the citation metrics, Impactstory collects alternative data.

• Publons / Web of Science

  Publons, part of Web of Science, is a profile and tracking system that enables you to collect metrics on your scholarly output.

Resources

Use the  Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to discover Open Access journals in your subject area. All journals must exercise peer-review or editorial quality control to be included in the DOAJ.

Source

Myth: If I negotiate to retain the rights to my work, publishers will think I am difficult and withdraw from publishing my work.

Truth

Publishers are very used to dealing with these requests at this point. Far from being unusual, the retention of rights by authors is becoming a mainstream choice. Approximately 72% of academic journals allow some form or Open Access archiving without any use of an addendum to the contract. If you do require an addendum, this is entirely reasonable. An addendum can allow you to self-archive in IADT's Institutional Repository, llustro, thus making your work Open Access.

Resources

• SHERPA/RoMEO

Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.

• SPARC Author Addendum

  Secure your rights as the author of a journal article.

• The following guide goes through everything authors need to know when it comes to copyright and negotiating their rights, including how to write an addendum to a publishing agreement. Guide: Authors and Copyright from Washington University.

Source.

Myth: Open Access publishing is more hassle than it is worth, as there is nothing for me at the end of it, and will undermine my credibility.

Truth

There are clear advantages for both society and the author:

• Multiple studies have shown increases in article-level metrics for Open Access articles, such as citation count, article download, and share rate. Open Access publications are cited more often than those that are subscription-only and citation counts are still important factors in advancement and promotion decisions.
• Higher downloads and citations according to The Open Access Citation Advantage Service provided by SPARC Europe.
• Increased visibility leads to greater public engagement and accessibility. The Wellcome Trust report that Open Access articles they have funded were downloaded 89% more when compared with access-controlled content.
• OA results in accelerated science. A study of Open Access and non-Open Access PNAS articles published between June 8, 2004, and December 20, 2004 supported the view that Open Access accelerates the process by which researchers built upon existing research, showing that Open Access articles are cited earlier and are, on average, cited more often than non-Open Access articles.
• OA facilitates collaboration with the Human Genome Project often cited as an example of the ability of Open Access to transform publications and data “into a much more powerful resource for research, education and innovation”. This international, collaborative research project was enabled by the use of open data, with all the sequence data made openly available for other researchers to reuse.

Resources

• The Open Access Citation Advantage Service is a list of all studies (up until 2015) examining whether or not there is a citation advantage to publishing through Open Access. Up to 2015, 65% of studies found there was a citation advantage to Open Access publishing.
• Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography

  This annotated bibliography lists studies and review articles that examine whether Open Access articles receive more citations than equivalent subscription; i.e., toll access (TA) articles.

Source, source, source.

Myth:  Open Access is a subversive movement that will ultimately undermine the copyright system and cause journals to fail.

Truth

Open Access works entirely within the current copyright system. The copyright of your work belongs to you automatically at the point of creation by virtue of having created it in a tangible way i.e. through typing it up and saving it. That copyright belongs to you, alongside permission to do with and share the work as you will, unless or until you sign some or all of it away - for example, through a publishing agreement with a traditional paid journal - see the myth addressing this above. There are many ways to ensure your copyright remains safe, such as by negotiating a specific publishing agreement that ensures such, or adding an Open Access addendum to the publisher-offered agreement. 

One safeguard that many journals implement is a time-limited embargo on Open Access. Journals recoup most of the publishing costs within the first year of publication. Articles can then be made Open Access without loss of revenue. Many huge names in the publishing sphere such as Oxford, Cambridge, Wiley, Sage, etc. have already changed their models to paid subscription-only to a hybrid model wherein OA articles are published alongside traditional ones. 

Resources

• Hybrid journal policies should be examined carefully, as some allow free access to the article but do not allow any of the derivative uses associated with true Open Access. See "When is Open Access Not Open Access?"
• The following guide goes through everything authors need to know when it comes to copyright and negotiating their rights, including how to write an addendum to a publishing agreement. Guide: Authors and Copyright from Washington University.

Source

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