Should I Publish in an Open Access Journal?

SHOULD I PUBLISH IN AN OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL? Deciding whether to publish in an Open Access journal or a traditional, subscription journal is an important one. This video details what points to consider when making this decision, in regard to scholarly publishing.

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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi there, I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.

Today I am going to be discussing if you should publish in an Open Access journal?
For many authors or researchers, the first step in the publication process is deciding whether to publish in an Open Access journal or in a traditional subscription or closed publication. The idea is that Open Access will deliver more downloads, more readers, and therefore a wider exposure to their work.
On the flip side, many Open Access journal charge a fee. Many are newer publications and may not have the cache of the some older, more established subscription or society publications have.
As a reminder, Open Access means there are no barriers to accessing or reading the articles in a journal such as needing a subscription. There are also limited or no copyright restrictions to the articles.
There are several models for Open Access or OA. Gold OA is the most common one. Under Gold OA, the journal may have various business models. One might be to charge an APC or Author Processing Charge which could range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. FYI according to the Directory of Open Access Journals 60% of all OA journals don’t charge an APC fee to the author. Check out DOAJ.org which calls itself, “s a community-curated list of open access journals and aims to be the starting point for all information searches for quality, peer reviewed open access material.”
Another model is Green OA. Under this model the author self-archives their article at a publicly available repository run by someone such as at a university.
So, in deciding whether to go Open Access there are five decision points:
First, is the journal an established and legitimate journal. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian from Colorado, has done a great work in identifying predatory publishers that accept basically all articles and do no peer review or work on the manuscript. They just charge an APC and post your material. Check if the journal you are considering is on his list of predatory publications. A link to this list is posted at the end of this video. To confirm the journal conforms to accepted practices you can also check the DOAJ site to see there are listed there, although some legitimate ones may not be on this voluntary list.
Second, confirm the publication is peer reviewed. Peer review is the bed rock of quality research.
Third, what metrics are used to measure the articles or publication against their peers. Does the journal have an Impact Factor? An H Index? Altmetrics or alternative metrics for its social media engagements or shares. If it has these or other metrics, how do the compare to other journals in their field?
Fourth, check where the journal is indexed. Is it in Google Scholar, Medline, CINAHL, or whatever index applies to your individual field? The most important thing for the journal is exposure and indexing directly helps with that exposure.
Finally, reputation is key. Ask your colleagues about any publication in your particular field and how it is perceived.
Many Open Access are high quality publications ones and are leaders in their field. Whether to pay an APC, if they charge one, may be a deciding factor.
At the end of the day, the reputation of the journal and how widely it is distributed or available to readers are the key decision points. These two factors are important and that is the decision point as whether to publish in Open Access or not.
Well that’s it. Click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel or to see the playlist as to dealing with the decision point as to publishing in Open Access or not or leave me a comment below or send me an email. Thanks a lot and take care.

[goldenratio]

Thank you so so much! This video is a life saver!

[dr.kareemasweetmint]

I want to know if there's any journal with charges and impact factor in which my paper could be accepted within 1 month. Biomedical science.

[zomorrorod]

Where is the link at the end of video? Where can I get it?

[rajhrahul]

HELLO SIR,
IS THEIR ANY FREE SCOPUS JOURNALS??? PLEASE SUGGEST SOME FRO MECHANICAL JOURNALS UNPAID

[navaneethkrishna]

Sir,
Can you suggest me a best journal to publish my work on physics. I had completed in almost 3 months before..I'm still waiting for a best journal to publish my paper.

[---tczp]

from my perspective, whether to publish on an open access journal is just a trade-off of payment between the reader and the author. for many young researchers, who are mostly students, may not be able to afford expensive open access fees, which cost 1 to 1.5 thousand dollars, these researchers have no choice but to publish on the journals that was close access, leaving the readers to make the payment which is affordable to them.
Fact is, in EU countries, open access is a legal requirement which costs one thousand to one thousand five hundred euros.