Open Access: The changing face of scientific publishing

Abstract

The debate on open access to scientific literature that has been raging in scholarly circles for quite some time now has been fueled further by the recent developments in the realm of the open access movement. This article is a short commentary on the current scenario, challenges, and the future of the open access movement.

Should We be More “Open” About Publishing Research?

“…The OA movement has accordingly been working to give everyone a greater awareness of the serious social problems caused by restricting access to academic research as well as the serious economic challenges for the future of academic publishing [10,11]. The intended audience of research articles is usually other researchers.…”

Open Access Journals: Good or Bad Reading?

“…Publishing open access commerce has evolved so much and quickly that now competes with traditional journals and books. OAJ have finally resulted in a timely dissemination of advances in science: the essence of OAJ is free access to scholarly literature without any price or permission barriers [1,2]. Since the first OAJ of anesthesiology -The Internet Journal of Anesthesiology-appeared on the WEB in 1996, there has been 1.9 million articles each year [19].…”

“…Such pay magazines are expensive, have high manuscripts rejection rates, prolonged time for accepting and publishing manuscripts, have an enormous recognition among the scientific community, authors do not pay for their publication, nor keep their author copy right. Recently, some of these publications have selected free access issues or articles, and several pay journals have full open access several months after its original publication -this kind of partial open access is called hybrid model [1,4,5]. These policies of traditional publishing companies delay diffusion of medical knowledge and finally postpone better medical attention of patients in geographic areas with fewer resources, which is where most people are sick and in need of quality health care.…”

Management of Self-directed E-learning from Open Accessed Journals in Science Education

“…subscription, licensing fees, copyright and licensing restrictions) [5]. They publish digital articles online quickly and spread knowledge worldwide within seconds.…”