Open Access Publishing: Dos & Don'ts, Whys and Why Nots
***NEWS: Cambridge University Press & SUNY Buffalo State University Sign Transformative Agreement to Waive all Article Processing Fees (APCs) for Buffalo State Faculty***
E. H. Butler Library is pleased to announce it has reached a three-year deal with Cambridge University Press to waive all article-processing charges (APCs) from Cambridge University Press journals for Buffalo State University faculty authors. Open access publications for Cambridge University Press have waived all APCs since January. In addition to waiving APC costs for the duration of the new contract, Cambridge has granted Butler Library patrons access to an additional 397 Cambridge journals. This is a three-year transformative deal. For more information, please contact Joe Riggie, Head of Information Management, or Chris Hulsman, Electronic and Educational Resources Librarian.
Open Access Mandate 2026 - Federally Funded Research
In August of 2022, President Biden announced that all federally funded research must immediately be made openly available to the public. This legislation takes effect in 2026. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), has already implemented a policy that makes NIH funded research available to the public. This does not necessarily mean that the published research is "Open-Access" by the definition of the term. There are many questions still revolving around the impact of this legislation:
- What will this mean for journal subscriptions and packages?
- How will open-access publishing and Article Processing Fees (APCs) be impacted?
- What license will I have to publish under?
We will continue to monitor the impact of this legislation and share news regarding the outcomes. In the meantime, the following is a list of readings that will shed some light on this legislation and the effects on scholarly output:
- Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum. (2022). Ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research
This memorandum provides policy guidance to federal agencies with research and development expenditures on updating their public access policies. In accordance with this memorandum, OSTP recommends that federal agencies, to the extent consistent with applicable law:
1. Update their public access policies as soon as possible, and no later than December 31st, 2025, to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release;
2. Establish transparent procedures that ensure scientific and research integrity is maintained in public access policies; and,
3. Coordinate with OSTP to ensure equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data. - D'Agostino, S. (2022, September 11). Who’ll Pay for Public Access to Federally Funded Research? Inside Higher Ed.The White House painted an incomplete economic picture of its new policy for free, immediate access to research produced with federal grants. Will publishers adapt their business models to comply, or will scholars be on the hook?
- U.C Santa Barbara Library: What the White House Open Access Publishing Guidance Means for [...] ResearchersThe federal government is making significant moves to encourage open access to research. During the summer of 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) made national headlines with its new guidance that, by 2026, research funded by all federal agencies should be made freely and immediately available to the public, with no embargo.
- Timmer, J. (2022, August 25). US government to make all research it funds open access on publication. ARS TechnicaMany federal policy changes are well known before they are announced. Hints in speeches, leaks, and early access to reporters at major publications all pave the way for the eventual confirmation.
- Kember, S., & Brand, A. (2023, Sugust 16). The corporate capture of open-access publishing: Done wrong, the movement will just reproduce the old monopolies. The Chronicle of Higher Education.The open-access policies now being adopted by governments around the world, most notably in the United States, Britain, and the European Union, are designed to remove paywalls from the publication of publicly funded research. In the United States, guidelines issued last year by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy require all federal funding agencies to devise and roll out plans for open publications and research data, as a condition of funding, by the start of 2026.
What is Open-Access?
Open access journals are journals whose articles are available and reusable worldwide free of charge and without restrictions immediately on publication. As a rule, contributions in journals that meet this definition are published under a Creative Commons license granted by the authors.
-Definition from the Open-Access Network
Choosing an Open-Access Journal to Publish In
Selecting an open-access journal to send manuscripts to can be a difficult task. There are several criteria you should use to judge an open-access journal. There are also a number of resources available to you as Buffalo State University Faculty.
Be sure to evaluate the journal to be sure the publisher/journal is not predatory. For more information on predatory
Questions Used to Evaluating an Open-Access Journal
- Are there fees (APCs) associated with publishing in the journal and are those fees clearly listed?
- Does the journal provide details about the peer-review process and does it list the journal's editors?
- Do you recognize the names of the editors? And does the institutional affiliation match on the institution's pages?
- Is the journal open-access OR hybrid
- Is the journal located in the Primo ALL-Search Index for Butler Library?
- Is the publisher a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association (OASPA)?
- Is the journal listed on Ulrichsweb or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
What are Hybrid Access Journals?
A hybrid open-access journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access. This status typically requires the payment of a publication fee (also called an article processing charge or APC) to the publisher in order to publish an article open access, in addition to the continued payment of subscriptions to access all other content. (Wikipedia)
Do's & Don'ts of Open Access Publishing
What to Do:
- Look up the Open Access Journal title in The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
- DOAJ (link below) is a directory of journals that publish open access. Being listed in DOAJ is a good indicator that the journal is not predatory and publishes through a legitimate peer-review process. DOAJ will also list the Article Processing Charge (APC) for most journals.
- Visit Think, Check, Submit to rate the journal you want to publish in through a checklist of criteria that will protect you as the researcher and author of the article.
- Look up the open access journal title in Sherpa Romeo (link below) to see what kinds of copyrights you retain and how you can share the different versions of your article
- Look up the journal on Beall's List and/or Predatory Reports to be sure that the journal is not listed as a predatory publisher or vanity press (for more information on predatory and vanity publishers, please visit the predatory journals page of this guide).
- Look up the editors of the journal and contact them directly to ensure they are practicing and credentialed academics/scholars.
What NOT to Do:
- Do not answer emails soliciting original work to an open access journal based on your previous publications unless you are familiar with the journal, publisher, and editorial staff.
- Do not answer solicitation emails asking for your previously published work to be featured in an anthology or open access journal.
- Do not always trust journals with small APCs (between $75 to $200). Many of these are predatory and do not perform quality review.
- Do not publish an open access article before reading the publisher-author copyright agreement.
- Do not publish open access before checking with a colleague or librarian about the journal if you have never heard of it.
Helpful Resources & Links
- Ulrichsweb This link opens in a new windowUlrichsweb is an easy to search source of detailed information on more than 300,000 periodicals (also called serials) of all types: academic and scholarly journals, e-journals, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and more.
- Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new windowProvides full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly, peer reviewed journals in many subjects and languages.
- Think.Check.SubmitThink. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research. Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.
- DOAJ: Principles of Transparency and Best PracticesThe Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), DOAJ, the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) are scholarly organisations that have collaborated to identify principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications. This is the fourth version of a work in progress (published September 15 2022). We encourage its wide dissemination.
- Sherpa Romeo
Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis. - SPARCSPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on our investment in research and education.
- SPARC How Open Is It GuideCreated by SPARC in conjunction with PLOS and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), the How Open Is It? Open Access Guide standardizes Open Access terminology in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource.
- Author Rights & the SPARC Author AddendumUnderstanding the effect of fully exercising the rights you have as an author can help you make educated choices about the publishing outlets you choose to submit work to. SPARC provides a full set of resources to help you learn more about your rights as an author, and the tools that are available to help you effectively manage your copyrights.
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)COPE brings together all those involved in scholarly research and its publication to strengthen the network of support, education and debate in publication ethics
- Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association (OASPA)Representing a diverse community of organisations engaged in open scholarship, OASPA works to encourage and enable open access as the predominant model of communication for scholarly outputs.
- Beall's List of Predatory Journals & PublishersBeall's List was a prominent list of predatory open-access publishers that was maintained by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog Scholarly Open Access. The list aimed to document open-access publishers who did not perform real peer review, effectively publishing any article as long as the authors pay the open access fee. Originally started as a personal endeavor in 2008, Beall's List became a widely followed piece of work by the mid-2010s.
- Predatory ReportsPredatory Reports is an organization made up of volunteer researchers who have been harmed by predatory publishers and want to help researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research.
We never charge any amount from our users and all published information is free for all audiences to access and use. We don't even display advertising on our website. It is completely free work and we are paying for all the cost by ourselves without the support of any company.
We decided to remain anonymous so as not to be sued by companies whose practices are quite aggressive. As our reach grows on the internet, we are already receiving threats. - ISSN International CentreThe CIEPS, also known as the ISSN International Centre, is an intergovernmental organization which manages at the international level the identification and the description of serial publications and ongoing resources, print and online, in any subject.
Benefits of Open-Access Publishing
- While your work is shared freely with the public, YOU keep the copyright and can share it on any platform you deem fit.
- Your research is more accessible and visible, which means that it is more likely to be cited and/or shared through popular media.
- Open-Access is available to the public and avoids large profits from commercial publishers through expensive paywalls and inflated institutional subscription packages.
- Open-Access and data facilitates the advancement of science.
Disadvantages to Open-Access Publishing
- Open-access publishing often requires the author to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) and many academic departments do not provide subsidies for APCs.
- Predatory journals and publishers reside in the open-access realm. They collect smaller APCs and solicit for publications, however they provide little to no peer-review and other publishing services that provide quality control for published science.
- Junk science and methodologies/papers motivated by political, religious, and monetary bias are published within the open-access realm.
- The number of high-quality open-access journals varies across the disciplines.
- Some open-access models include "mega-publishers" (PLoS, MDPI, etc.) that exist by publishing a large amount of content. These publishers may or may not be predatory, however, the amount of published science has the potential to lessen the perceived impact of peer-reviewed, evidence-based published science.
Types of Open-Access Publications
There are several types of journal open-access policies. The journals are not always immediately transparent about which type of journal they are and sometimes they have different copyright and sharing policies for each article. Below is a list of the typical open-access publication types. Always refer to your publication license to find out what your copyright to your research output allows. Feel free to use Sherpa Romeo and the SPARC author rights site (above).
Gold
Publisher makes articles fully available and accessible to the public under a Creative Commons license or similar license. The article's author or an institution pays an Article Processing Charge (APC). APCs can vary from as low as $100 to as high as $12,000. For the most part, Gold OA journals are entirely open-access.
Hybrid
Journals that publishes BOTH open-access articles and proprietary subscription articles. Authors are allowed to pay to make the articles open access. Occasionally a funding agency will require the research to be published open access or made available in a repository. In a sense, Hybrid journals get paid by the authors for open access AND by institutions for access to the journal. While the OA articles are free without subscription, the paywalled articles require purchase.
Diamond/Platinum
Journals that publish articles as open access but DO NOT charge APCs. These journals are subsidized by institutions, advertising, or philanthropy.
Bronze
Journals that are free to read online but do not have a clearly identifiable license OR the license is not posted.
Green
Allows for self-archiving and/or sharing of your work. Generally using a pre-print or post-print version in an institutional repository or other researcher network.
Grey
Access to the articles are made available by the author through a repository or scholarly social network with an author's affirmation that the have the right to distribute the work.
Black
Black open-access refers to the illegal sharing and distribution of scholarly proprietary content through piracy.
Types of Publication Prints
Depending on the publisher and specific journal, an author may or may not have rights to share certain versions of their paper/manuscript. Most subscription/proprietary journals do not allow for any sharing of the manuscript, especially the publisher's version. The website Sherpa Romeo lists several journal's copyright guidelines for published articles (link above). Below are the definitions of the versions of articles:
Pre-Prints
The author's copy of the manuscript before it's been reviewed or pre-reviewed. These are often found in institutional repositories and often linked in Google Scholar. These versions are technically NOT peer-reviewed as the edits suggested by the peer-reviewers have not been implemented. Pre-Prints can be manuscripts finished BEFORE submission OR they can be manuscripts that are accepted, but yet to go through peer-review. They may also appear in social sharing research networks like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, ArXiv (multiple platforms), and other similar platforms.
Post-Prints
The author's copy of an article after it has been accepted and peer-reviewed. These versions are not yet formatted for the final version that will appear in the print version of the journal issue or in the electronic issue. These also are often found in institutional repositories and occasionally linked in Google Scholar. They may also appear in social sharing research networks like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, ArXiv (multiple platforms), and other similar platforms.
Publisher's Version
The version a journal's publisher edits and formats for the final published version of the article. These are the versions that will appear in subscription research databases and behind journal paywalls.
