Finally free for everyone for ever – The benefits and limitation to authors publishing through Open Access
The motivations for my final topic of the module come from an internship I had in the summer, where I was working at Taylor & Francis analysing data that was part of a survey on Open Access in article publishing. My aim for this blog is to expand this knowledge and analyse its benefits and drawbacks. The short 2 minutes video below from T&F provides a concise description of what Open Access is, useful in gaining a basic knowledge.
Some of the advantages and disadvantages to authors in removing barriers to article access are detailed by SPARC, Taylor & Francis and Wiley. The major benefit is that articles can be viewed and accessed by a lot more people on a global scale, limited only by access to the internet. This increases readership, by up to 250%, and the application of an authors research, leading to greater visibility, prestige and reputation for an author among academics in most cases. Another advantage in the speed in which peer reviewed, authentic, scientific articles are published online. Benefits do not just come from an authors work however; as open access increases and more authors publish their work freely online, other authors have an ever growing source or articles that can supplement/support/critique their own research, and could lead to greater collaboration between authors. All of this can only be beneficial to the academic community and to society as a whole, and with the Higher Education Funding Council for England announcing “that all UK research post-April 2016 must be open access in order to qualify for funding assessments“, it is entirely reasonable that these advantages will continue to benefit more and more authors.
However there are drawbacks. In order for an author to gain Gold Access (the most extreme form of open access) in some journals, authors need to pay an article publishing charge to the publisher in the range of £1000-£2000 per article. However this isn’t as bad as you may think for the author as payment is usually made by the funding organisation or institution (university), and I’d certainly like to think scientific progression trumps financial burdens. Also, the majority of open access journals do not charge any money at all. A second drawback would be that certain authors may risk becoming lost in the crowd. With the vast numbers of articles that are being made available freely online it is entirely possible that less well known, less-distinguishable and less-renown authors get shunted in favour of more familiar writers. However, despite the possible disadvantages, it seems likely that open access will continue to grow in use and popularity thanks to the growth in the reach of the internet.
References
SPARC (2014) Benefits of Open Access. SPARC Europe (http://sparceurope.org/open-access/benefits-of-open-access/)
Wiley (2014) Author FAQs. Wiley Open Access. (http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25e4f1aa/Author-FAQs.html)
Taylor & Francis (2013) An Introduction to Open Access publishing from Taylor & Francis Group. Taylor & Francis Group. (http://www.tandfonline.com/page/openaccess)
Willetts, D. (2012) Open Access to academic research? This will be a seismic shift. The Guardian Online. 1st May. (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/01/open-free-access-academic-research)
Ratcliffe, R. (2014) What’s the biggest challenge facing open access?. The Guardian Online. 27th October. (http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/oct/27/-sp-whats-the-biggest-challenge-facing-open-access)
Taylor and Francis (2014) Taylor and Francis Open Access Program. Taylor & Francis Online. (http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/OpenAccess.asp#top)
Suber, P. (2013) Open Access: Six myths put to rest. The Guardian Online. 21st October. (http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/oct/21/open-access-myths-peter-suber-harvard)
