Open Access Journals

Morag Greig

Outline

• OA journals - definition• OA journals - advantages• How do people find OA journals?• Publishing in existing OA journals• Setting up an OA journal• Publisher OA options

OA journals: what are they?

• Scholarly journals that are available to the reader without financial or other barrier other than access to the internet itself.

• OA journals perform peer review in the same way as subscription journals

• OA journals cover their costs in various ways – some are subsidised ; some charge author fees

• OA journals are published by e.g. publishers, institutions and by scholarly organisations

OA journals - advantages

• Worldwide audience• Studies have demonstrated that freely

available journals are read and cited more often that those requiring a subscription

• Increased likelihood of journal being included in international bibliographies and in citation indexes

How do people find OA journals?

• By searching the Internet• Via OA harvesters such as OAIster• Via the Directory of Open Access Journals (

http://www.doaj.org)• Via publisher sites such as Bioline

International (http://www.bioline.org) • Via sites such as Free Medical Journals (

http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/)• Increasingly via abstracting and indexing

library databases plus library catalogues

Publishing in existing OA journals

• Articles are peer reviewed in the normal way• Some OA journals charge a fee to publish

articles ; others do not• Some OA journals may not charge a fee

depending on the country of origin of the author(s), e.g. authors in this country can submit articles to BioMed Central journals free of charge

Setting up an OA journal

• An alternative may be to set up an OA journal• An existing print journal can be turned into an OA

journal or a new journal can be established• A funding model will need to be established• Both will involve choosing the appropriate software to

deliver the journal online• Open source software is available and can provide

journal management (e.g. manuscript submission, peer review etc.as well as delivery of the journal to end users

Software for journal management

C = charged F = free

• AllenTrack, http://www.allentrack.net (C)

• BenchPress (HighWire), http://benchpress.highwire.org (C)

• EdiKit (Berkeley Electronic Press), http://www.bepress.com/edikit.html (C)

• Editorial Manager (Aries Systems Corporation), http://www.editorialmanager.com (C)

• eJournalPress, http://www.ejournalpress.com (C)

• ESPERE, http://www.espere.org (C)

• Open Journal Systems, http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/ojs/ (F)

• Rapid Review (Cadmus Professional Publication),

• ScholarOne, http://www.ScholarOne.com (C)

• XPress Track, http://www.xpresstrack.com (C)

Open Journal Systems

Useful articles

Willinsky, J. & Mendis, R. (2007). "Open access on a zero budget: a case study of Postcolonial Text" Information Research, 12(3) paper 308. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-3/paper308.html]

Useful links

• OSI Guide to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/oajguides/html/business_planning.htm

• OSI Guide to Business Planning for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/oajguides/html/business_converting.htm

• Public Library of Science ‘Publishing open access journals’: http://www.plos.org/downloads/oa_whitepaper.pdf

Publisher OA options

• An increasing number of publishers now offer paid OA options to authors

• Publisher response to OA movement and mandates from funding bodies to make articles resulting from grants freely available

• Result is that individual journal articles can be OA within a subscription journal

• Expectation is that such charges will be paid by funding bodies or institutions