Unlike journals published by a commercial publisher, open access journals are freely available online to the public. There are no charges or subscription fees to readers or their institutions. And, most open access journals are peer reviewed or undergo editorial quality control. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) currently lists over 4300 open access journals in 17 major disciplines around the world. This sounds like a good thing, right? So why aren’t all journals open access?
The prevailing business model has been commercial or society publishers accepting articles from researchers or scholars, putting the articles through a peer-review and editing process and then bundling articles in a journal issue – sometimes at great subscription cost to libraries and other consumers. The situation is improving, though; several business models are evolving that favor open access. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central (BMC) are two large open access publishers. One PLoS journal, PLoS Biology, has achieved a high impact factor and ranking in a very short time. The BMC journal Genome Biology is a top journal in its field. Both these publishers operate with membership fees paid by libraries, and fees paid by authors to publish in their journals.
The majority of open access journals, though, do not charge article fees or memberships to authors and libraries. Editors are finding that they reduce costs by doing away with print editions and increase the visibility and impact of their journals by making them freely available online. They rely on business models such as advertising, sponsorships, or society dues. For example, many academic libraries now sponsor publishing services hosting online journals edited by their faculties. K-State Libraries launched New Prairie Press just last year and is now publishing two journals – both open access - with two additional journals in the works. If you are involved with editing or publishing a journal at K-State and want to know more about moving your content to an open access platform like New Prairie Press, contact Dale Askey (daskey@k-state.edu).
Wondering what this is all about? Check out our earlier post explaining Open Access Week, and watch for more posts this week, and even more information on our Twitter feed.
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