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Tag: Open Access

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This week is Open Access week! Open access is an international movement that looks to remove barriers to scientific research and data. The goal is that everyone can access academic scholarship equally without running into legal, financial or technical barriers (1).

This year's theme for Open Access Week is “Community Over Commercialization.” The goal is to look at ways we can share scholarship in ways that benefit everyone. 

If you want to get involved and learn more, check out these on-campus events run by the George Washington Open Source Project:

Oct 22nd, 7pm-9:30pm Movie Night with Q&A for Open Access Week

University Student Center Amphitheater

Join the GW OSPO for a showing of "The Internet's Own Boy: The Aaron Swartz Story", an award-winning movie about a computer programmer, writer, political organizer, and internet activist and his battle with the U.S. government and the publishing industry as he risks everything in the pursuit of sharing knowledge. The screening will be followed by a Q&A panel to talk about research, publishing, access to information, and other important topics raised throughout this film.

Popcorn will be provided. The first 25 attendees will get a homemade chocolate chip peanut butter cookie!

Oct 24, 11:30am-12:30pm GW Coders' Lunch and Learn: Care Work and Accessibility in p5.js and Open Source Software*

Join us in SEH, B2600 or online in Zoom: https://go.gwu.edu/gwcoderszoom

We are very excited to host the lead maintainer of the open source project p5.js.  p5.js is a friendly tool for learning to code and make art. It is a free and open-source JavaScript library built by an inclusive, nurturing community. p5.js welcomes artists, designers, beginners, educators, and anyone else! Qianqian Ye, the lead maintainer will discuss care work, accessibility, demonstrate the tool, and answer questions.

Oct 25, 12pm-1pm GW OSPO Webinar Panel Discussion: Can Diamond Open Access disrupt the broken paywall publishing model and save science with the help of open source software?

Join us online: GW OSPO Zoom Webinar

Our distinguished panel of Diamond Open Access experts from across the globe will explore possible paths forward for open access publishing.  Please come and bring your hard questions for this group to try to answer.

If you want to explore and learn about Open Access on your own time, here are some materials and resources to explore Open Access:

Paywall Documentary: Not familiar with the world of Scholarly Publishing, or the Open Access movement? Take some time to watch the documentary “Paywall.” Paywall is an excellent introduction to the world of Open Access for complete beginners and it’s a great watch. 

PHD Comics: Don’t have the time for a full documentary? Try this video comic from PHD comics about Open Access that provides a dynamic illustrated introduction to the topic. 

Open Access and Your Research: Curious what Open Access means for you and your own work? Check out this instructional video from the Scholarly Communications Committee about what to expect. 

OA LibGuide: Need to find open access material to learn about medicine? Try our Open Access LibGuide which contains links to textbooks, journals, and other resources people can use. 

  1. What is open access? International Open Access Week. Accessed October 17, 2024. https://www.openaccess.nl/en/what-is-open-access
  2. Paywall: The Business of Scholarship. The Movie.; 2018. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAzTR8eq20k
  3. Open Access Explained!; 2012. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY
  4. Open Access and Your Research.; 2022. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SpLN7BbzGg

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Image of a sheep's body with a wolf's head.
Image by Sarah Richter from Pixabay

We’ve been getting a lot of questions recently about Open Access (OA) journals, and predatory journals, and how to tell the difference between them. Navigating the publishing landscape is tricky enough without having to worry about whether or not the journal you choose for your manuscript might be predatory. The concept of predatory journals may be completely new to some researchers and authors. Others who are aware of the dangers of predatory journals might mistake legitimate scholarly OA journals as predatory because of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) charged by OA journals. In today’s post, we’ll explore the differences between OA journals and predatory journals, and how to tell the difference between them.

Open Access Journals

The open access publishing movement stemmed from a need to make research more openly accessible to readers and aims to remove the paywalls that most research was trapped behind under that traditional publishing model. In a traditional, non-OA journal, readers must pay to access the full text of an article published in a journal. This payment may be through a personal subscription, a library-based subscription to the journal, or a single payment for access to a single article. 

This video provides a great overview of why and how OA journals came about:

OA journals shift the burden of cost from the reader to the author by operating under an “author pays” model. In this model, authors pay a fee (often called an “Article Processing Charge” or APC) to make their articles available as open access. Readers are then able to access the full text of that article free of charge and without paying for a subscription. OA articles are accessible for anyone to read and without a paywall. The author fees associated with OA journals can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. OA journals charging APCs is completely normal and paying to publish in an open access journal is not itself a sign that the title is predatory in nature - this is normal practice for open access journals that helps publishers cover the cost of publication.

Open access journals offer all of the same author services that traditional journals offer, including quality peer review and article archiving and indexing services. Legitimate OA journals have clear retraction policies and manuscript submission portals. There are different types of OA journals, including journals that publish only OA articles, and hybrid journals that publish OA articles alongside articles that exist behind a paywall. To learn more about the types of OA research, check our recent blog post on Green, Gold, and Diamond OA models. 

Predatory Journals 

Predatory publishing came about as a response to the open access movement as unethical businesses saw OA journals as a way to make money off of researchers' need to publish. Predatory journals use the OA model for their own profit and use deceptive business practices to convince authors to publish in their journals. 

One key difference between reputable, scholarly OA journals and predatory journals is that predatory journals charge APCs without providing any legitimate peer view services. This means that there are no safeguards to protect a quality research article from being published alongside junk science. Predatory journals typically promise quick peer review, when in reality, no peer review actually takes place. 

When you publish with a legitimate OA journal, the journal provides peer review, archiving, and discovery services that help others find your work easily. Predatory journals do not provide these essential services. Publishing in a predatory journal could mean that your work could disappear from the journal's website at any time, making it difficult to prove that your paper was ever published in said journal. Additionally, because predatory journals are not indexed in popular databases such as Scopus, PubMed, CINAHL, or Web of Science, despite false claims to the contrary, other researchers may never find, read, and cite your research. 

Some general red flags to look for include:

  • Emailed invitations to submit an article
  • The journal name is suspiciously similar to a prominent journal in the field
  • Misleading geographic information in the title
  • Outdated or unprofessional website
  • Broad aim and scope
  • Insufficient contact information (a web contact form is not enough)
  • Lack of editors or editorial board
  • Unclear fee structure
  • Bogus impact factors or invented metrics
  • False indexing claims
  • No peer review information

To learn more about predatory journals, check out our Predatory Publishing Guide.

OA vs. Predatory: How to Tell the Difference

Luckily, identifying scholarly open access journals and predatory journals can be done if you know what to look for, including the red flags listed above. OA journals that are published by reputable publishers (such as Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Springer Nature, etc.) can be trusted. If a journal is published by a well-known, established publisher, it’s a safe bet that the journal is not predatory in nature. These well-known, large publishers have policies in place that predatory journals lack, including indexing and archiving policies, peer review policies, retraction policies, and publication ethics policies.

Learn more by watching our How to Spot a Predatory Journal tutorial:

Check out the assessment tools available in our Predatory Publishing Guide for more tools that can help you evaluate journals, emails from publishers, and journal websites. There are even some great case studies available on this page to put your newly learned skills into practice! 

For questions about predatory journals, or to take advantage of Himmelfarb’s Journal PreCheck Service, contact Ruth Bueter (rbueter@gwu.edu) or complete our Journal PreCheck Request Form.  

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Open access is the emerging standard for how scientific literature is published and shared. An open access publication is digital, has no fees required for access, and has no copyright or licensing restrictions. The idea is to make scientific findings accessible to all who would benefit. This is a noble goal, but the practicalities of its application can be confusing. There are a number of ways that authors and publishers can make published studies available open access. Some put the burden of payment on the author or institution that produced the research, some on the publisher, and an emerging model puts it on libraries who enter agreements with publishers for subscriptions with open access benefits for researchers at their institution.

The three most common models are green, gold, and diamond/platinum open access.  Here’s a quick breakdown of each:

Green OA - A publisher allows the author(s) to self-archive an open access copy of the article being published in one of its journals. This is generally allowed for a preprint version of the article. The author can opt to self-archive to a subject-based archive like PubMed Central, or in an institutional repository, like Himmelfarb’s Health Sciences Research Commons. To find out if a journal allows Green OA and what the specific terms are, Sherpa/Romeo is a free tool to check publisher open access policies. Learn more about how to deposit your research in an institutional repository in our video tutorial, Archiving Scholarship in an Institutional Repository.

Gold OA - The authors (or their affiliated institution) pay the publisher to allow open access to the content with an Article Processing Charge (APC). In this model, the author frequently retains copyright. The downside is the typically high expense to publish gold OA in reputable journals. Note that vanity presses and some predatory publications will fall into the gold category. Learn more about how to identify a predatory journal in our video tutorial, How to Spot a Predatory Journal.

Diamond or Platinum OA - Also known as cooperative or non-commercial open access, in this model neither the author nor the reader pays. Typically this model is used by not-for-profit publishing venues like University presses or scholarly society publications. A 2021 study estimated that there are 29,000 diamond OA journals, but only 10,000 of them are included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and many are not indexed to make their contents findable in databases. Only about half of diamond OA journal articles have a DOI which jeopardizes future access.

The Venn diagram below developed by Jamie Farquarhson illustrates what each of the three levels means for both authors and readers.

Venn diagram with copyright retention, cost for authors and readers, and peer review for open access models.
Diagram by Jamie-farquharson - https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21598179, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125787281

As Gold OA becomes more common, some institutions are creating funds that their researchers can use to pay for APCs. Researchers are also including these expenses in grant applications, especially for those like NIH grants that require depositing research findings and associated data in freely accessible archives. Learn more about how to include article processing charges into grants in our video tutorial, How to Include Article Processing Charges (APCs) in Funding Proposals.

As mentioned earlier in this article, libraries are starting to take on some of the burden of APCs. In what’s known as a transformative agreement, the fees paid to a publisher are transitioning from subscription access for library users to open access publishing by the institution’s researchers and authors. The library pays for both users to read for free and for the institution's authors to publish open access in the publisher’s journals. There may be limits on how many articles can be published or other price caps built in. Usually, these agreements are cost neutral meaning that the library is not saving on subscription fees. Currently, GW has  transformative agreements in place with Cambridge Journals and The Company of Biologists (Development, Journal of Cell Science, and the Journal of Experimental Biology). GW has explored transitioning to transformative agreements with other publishers.

Sources

Arianna Becerril, Lars Bjørnshauge, Jeroen Bosman, et al. The OA Diamond Journals Study. March, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4562790

Lisa Janiche Hinchliffe. Transformative Agreements in Libraries: A Primer. The Scholarly Kitchen blog, April 23, 2019. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/04/23/transformative-agreements/

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Image of orange buttons with Open Access logo using the letters O and A to form an open padlock in a white bowl.
"Open Access promomateriaal" by biblioteekje is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) journals make content available to anyone free of charge. While traditional publishing models require readers or institutions to purchase subscriptions to gain access to published content, users attempting to access this content without a subscription will find the content hidden behind a paywall. OA articles, on the other hand, can be accessed and read by anyone without payment or a subscription. 

The two most common OA publishing models are Gold OA and Hybrid OA. Gold OA journals make all published articles available to readers free of charge. Hybrid OA journals publish OA articles that are free to all readers, as well as traditional articles that can only be accessed and read by subscribers who pay for that content. Hybrid OA journals let authors choose whether or not to make their research available as open access or to restrict access via the traditional paywall model.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

While publishing your research as OA makes your work more widely accessible, it does come at a cost to the author. OA journals transfer the cost of publication from the reader to the author by charging authors Article Processing Charges, also known as APCs. The cost of APCs varies by journal, but the cost range from $2,000 to $5,000 for health sciences journals.

If you’d like to publish your research as OA, it’s important to consider how you will pay for APCs early in your research process. We recommend that you request funding for APCs in grant and funding proposals. Building these costs into your funding proposals will ensure that you have the necessary funds needed to cover APCs when you’re ready to publish. NIH grants and NSF grants allow for publication costs to be included in grant applications - so be sure to secure funding from the start of the research process!

To learn more about APCS, take a few minutes to watch Himmelfarb’s tutorials on Locating APCs and Including APCs in Funding Proposals!

Locating Article Publishing Charges (APCs) tutorial:

Including APCs in Funding Proposals tutorial:

APCs Waived for GW Authors!

GW currently has active “transformative agreements” with two publishers: Cambridge University Press, and The Company of Biologists. These agreements allow GW authors to publish their research as open access at no cost to authors - APCs are waived! The Cambridge University Press agreement covers nearly 50 medicine and health sciences journals. The Company of Biologist agreement waives APCs for GW authors in the following three hybrid journals:

It’s important to note that these agreements do not guarantee acceptance for publication in these journals. Manuscripts must meet the journal’s acceptance criteria. Authors must also use GW as their primary affiliation upon manuscript submission. Authors who claim another organization (such as the MFA, GW Hospital, CNHS, or the VA) are not covered under these agreements. For more information about GW’s Read and Publish agreements with Cambridge University Press and The Company of Biologist, contact Ruth Bueter at rbueter@gwu.edu.

Learn More:

If you’d like to learn more about open access publishing, check out our Open Access Publishing page of the Scholarly Publishing Research Guide. 

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