When writing the last blog post, I included references for further
reading. If anyone who was not affiliated with a university tried to read
these papers, you would find that you would have to fork over $30 or so per
paper to view anything besides the abstract. Considering that reading one
of these articles may stir your interest in further research, you could quickly
find yourself on a very expensive paper journey. It was from the
frustration with this ensconced system that the open access movement was born.
Before I describe what open access means, I thought I’d give a
brief description of the publishing process. The life of a scientific
paper begins as a manuscript, written by scientists to communicate their latest
results. Once the manuscript is complete, it is submitted to a journal of
the author’s choosing. The staff of the journal first assesses whether
the manuscript fits their organization’s specific scope. If so, they send
the manuscript to two to three reviewers, who are experts in a specific field,
for example professors at a research university.
The reviewers determine whether the science is sound and give their
opinion whether they think the manuscript should be published. They
send this information back to the journal editor, who then makes the final
decision as to the fate of the manuscript. Historically, subscription and
advertising fees supported most peer-reviewed journals.
With the popularization of the Internet, publishing scientific
articles online became easy and inexpensive. This technology facilitated
the creation of the open access movement. The main tenet of open access,
as outlined in the 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative is that
literature “should be freely accessible online.” Publishing articles on
the internet not only increases the speed at which information can be shared,
but it can also be done at a much higher volume as compared to print.
Access to scientific research at no cost benefits society in a
number of ways. For instance, it assists
small businesses in cost savings when developing new techniques.
Subscription fees for non-open access journals are quite expensive, often
prohibiting readership from those with less capital such as universities in
developing countries. Therefore open
access journals bolster research programs at these institutions. Finally, free scientific articles allow healthcare
professionals (e.g. physicians, physician assistants and nurses) to keep up
with the latest research, which helps them to make more informed decisions when
treating their patients.
Recently Dr. John Bohannon, a reporter at Science, exposed a
downfall of the rapidly growing open access publishing industry. He
concocted a manuscript describing a fake anticancer drug candidate. He
purposefully included flawed experiments that “any reviewer with more than a
high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data
plot should have spotted.” He submitted different versions of this faux
article to 304 open access journals. Surprisingly, more than half of them
accepted the manuscript, many of which without any apparent peer review.
This sting reveals the predatory nature of some of the budding open
access journals and also the lack of quality peer review. Hopefully Dr.Bohannon’s exposé will motivate open access publishers to address their
weaknesses.
So how do open access journals pay their editorial and IT staff?
Instead of charging for subscriptions, the journals instead charge the
authors to publish the articles. In countries with well-funded research
programs, this fee is usually not a concern. In developing nations,
however, the publishing fee could be a major hurdle. Therefore many open
access journals offer discounts or fee waivers to those under financial
hardships.
You can support open access through Amazon’s Smiles program.
For every eligible purchase you make Amazon will donate 0.5% to the
Public Library of Science (PLOS), a nonprofit publisher, to help support
authors who cannot afford their publication fees. (NOTE: PLOS ONE
rejected the faux Science manuscript due to its poor scientific quality. Also note the impeccable timing of this post,
which may or may not be a blatant plug for PLOS!) This donation costs you
no money, so no excuse not to sign up!
