You might have often heard the group of words “open access journal publishing” if you are related to the education or research field. Nowadays, people talk about the free resources for knowledge as the Internet makes the normal human being very addicted to knowing something new. Earlier, the knowledgeable contents were not free to access, but now people understand the power of making this content free for the general population.
These opening remarks lead us to the question: How can we answer the question? What is open access journal publishing? or what is an open-access journal? So, tighten your seatbelt; I will take you on a ride in the deep sea of the open-access world.
So, What is Open Access?
Anything which doesn’t require any prior permission, license, subscription, or fee payment is called open access. In simple language, the content which is open access is free to consume. In other words, you can say that it is a way of conveying information (in digital form) free of cost via the Internet.
For example, when you surf the Internet for knowledge hunting, you find two kinds of web pages. The first type may ask for a payment, some authentication, or a subscription to allow you to access the content. The second type doesn’t ask for fees or a subscription but directly allows you to access the content. The latter type is called open-access content.
Open-access word is much more prevalent in research publications or scholarly literature. The scholarly articles are open access and can be accessed without any payment over the Internet. The primary form factor of open-access content is digital, which is accessible on the Internet. The subsequent section will focus on the purpose of open access, which will clarify your understanding.
What is the purpose of open access journal publishing?
The primary purpose of open access journal publishing is to maximize the availability of research documentation, usually in research articles, book reviews, book chapters, or recorded communication regarding novel fact findings. The idea of open access journal publishing has erupted from the matured understandings which emphasize the belief that knowledge gained from public efforts must be freely accessible. It will not be cliche to say that publishing open-access content is a noble cause and indirectly affects millions.
What are the types of open access journal publishing or mode of open access journal publishing?
It has been divided into three categories. Each has been explained below;
Green Open Access
This mode of open access is closely coupled with the author’s intention. Intention means; whether authors are willing to put/archive their accepted research article(s) to their institutional repositories or other open-access sites. This arrangement empowers the authors to make the last version of their research paper available, even though it has been published in subscription-based journals.
Gold Open Access
This mode may give you a setback after knowing that it involves some form of cost to authors for open publishing access. However, this may provide immediate online access to the published article on the publisher’s website. Publishers following this mode demand payment as processing charges. In this mode, the author must assign the publishers a copyright.
Hybrid Open Access
This mode involves the working principle from the above-discussed categories. An author can put their contents in open-access journals for availing to other readers.
I think you are well aware of “open access.” So, without wasting much time, let’s jump into the core part of this blog, which is all about open-access journals & open-access journal publishing.
What is an open-access journal?
Don’t expect any contradictory definition of the real meaning of open access. To define this term, rewrite the term as “open access to the journal.” You will have the definition automatically by putting the meaning of open access in the first place and the meaning of journal in the second place. Still, if you are confused, read the paragraph below for the exact words.
Definition of open access journal: Journals (collections of well-formatted and expert-reviewed research articles written by academics, research scholars, industry experts, or professors) that do not require any prerequisite (in the form of paid subscription or license) for accessing the inside articles are called open-access journals or open access journal publishing
Journals having open access are not just free to read. Instead, the contents of such journals are also immune from most copyright and licensing restrictions. Anyone can have the reference of these articles for their future works.
Open access journal publishing contents are open to all research communities and normal human beings. You are not required to purchase a subscription or any special license to access the published research articles in such journals. The most beautiful thing about these categories of journals is that they are “free.”
open access journal publishing contents were not very popular as there were no dedicated online infrastructures. Journals were in print form only. However, after the entrance of the Internet, many publishers have developed open access journal publishing websites. open access journal publishing contents can be accessed by anyone having a good internet connection. So, you might be clear now that this is a very generous arrangement to accelerate the research and development by subtracting the cost hurdles.
Recently, research funding agencies (mainly controlled by the national administration) are compressing researchers to make their findings open because the funding received from tax money should be reverted with positive outcomes.
What is the purpose of open access journal?
Researchers from many countries across the globe do not have the same financial support to afford the high subscription rates of closed-access journals. Due to this limitation, many good research scholars find it difficult to access others’ scholarly content and their relevant fields’ novel findings. In the research world, the word “reference” matters a lot. By referring to others’ research work, researchers can get handsome help in their tasks.
To overcome the above-cited problem, open access journal publishing has emerged. This journal believes that knowledge derived from public funding must be freely accessible to all researchers. The other reason open access journal publishing gained popularity is that publicly funded research works become very easy to access. The statement, as mentioned earlier, makes them more likely to be downloaded, read, and cited.
What is the importance of open access journal publishing?
What we are today is only and only due to research, directly or indirectly—for example, our great fathers used to eat raw meat for survival. Still, eventually, medical science evolved, and via rigorous research/observations, we concluded that cooked stuff is way more beneficial to the human body and easy to digest. This is just a small example of the impact of research on human life. I can write a whole essay on this.
By the above discussion, there is no doubt that research is a nonneglectable part of our life to make our routine life more sustainable and prosperous. So, the journal’s open access brings this even further by allowing free access to research articles.
For most junior-level researchers, open access journal publishing allows them to take advantage of published scholarly work from experienced and expert researchers around the globe.
From the author’s point of view, an article published in open access journal publishing gets more attention from citations worldwide as it is open to all. This also works as a motivation factor for contributing more in relevant fields. Furthermore, a higher number of citations can lead to a swelling number of inter researchers’ communication, making it even more fruitful for new directions.
How can I find open access journal publishing websites?
Online directories are available to find open access journal publishing relevant to your research fields. These directories have a well-organized list of the journal with all details of volume and issues. However, make sure about the indexing status of these journals before publishing your articles. These directories will work as a one-stop solution for finding open access journal publishing websites. Famous players of this game are:
- Directory of Open Access Journals >> (sometimes referred to as the open access journals directory or DOAJ.)
- International Scientific Indexing >>
- BEALL’S LIST >> (List of Publishers)
- Hindawi Publication >>
What are the open-access journals which have no publication fee for authors?
Finding an open-access journal that publishes the article for free is very tough and time-consuming. However, you may find such open-access journals via ISI . In ISI, you will have all journals’ categories. First, select the journals of your concern field and get the publisher details. Then, insert this publisher detail in BEALL’S LIST . While researching this type of journal, please read the authors’ section carefully. By this methodology, you might find a journal that accepts free publication.
One another way to find such journals is to visit the directory of open-access journals; You can follow below given steps:
- Go to DOAJ
- Enter your discipline or keywords in the Search box to search for journal titles.
- On the results page, choose “Without article processing charges (APCs)” on the left.
Who can start open-access journal publishing?
Any individual, institution, organization, NGO, national body, group of individuals or academician can start their open-access journal. There are no such difficult criteria to the full fill as a prerequisite for establishing the new open-access journals. The only requirement is that you have will power to start it; resources needed for the journal will be automatically prompted in front of you.
Would you like to start your own journal? Click here to make your journal website live in 2 weeks.
Start Open Access Journal >>
What is the process of starting a new open-access journal?
To start a new open-access journal, you need basic things, which I have listed below in a step-by-step manner. If you acquire all these details well in advance, then any journal hosting service provider can establish your journal in 2-3 weeks. However, ISSN and indexing can take much time, depending upon which country you are in. So read each step carefully.
- Finding out the name of the journal and the area of research.
- Obtain the ISSN for the journal.
- Find an excellent editorial team.
- Automated website with SMS, email support, and online publication.
- Define all policies about an open journal system.
- Licensing and indexing open journal system.
- Advertise your journal.
Is there any open-source platform for open-access journals?
One world-renowned open-source platform is the “open journal system (OJS).” This platform allows anyone to start their journal website with readily available journal architecture and workflow. This platform already hosts more than 25000 open access journals. So, if you host your journal on this platform, you will get free popularity along with the overall workflow per the guidelines of leading indexing agencies like SCOPUS.
OJS allows us to manage, review, and organize all scientific content for later publication. Everything is handled by an editor located in servers to manage the contents better. It is also a system that helps to train people so that they can step by step assemble their journals in a very professional way. This is also important if you consider all the guidelines by Scopus and WOS. All these are the protocols to follow to take a scientific journal from 0 to publication and its ISSN.
What if I don’t know about the journal website development on OJS?
Don’t worry; all the researchers need not know the website development technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Researchers from non-IT backgrounds may find this task difficult.
To overcome the above-cited problem, you may hire a tech company with expertise in open journal system (OJS) hosting and setup. However, you need to pay the relevant remuneration. In addition, these service providers often offer fully customized OJS themes, which can make your journal website stand out from the crowd. On the contrary, you need to pay hefty charges for these add-ons. If you are not ready to pay an additional amount, you can go for the default OJS themes.
Conclusion:
To summarize, I would say that the open-access movement is a blessing for the research community worldwide. Publishing your article in open-access journals can attract more attention from other researchers. All in all, open-access journals can contribute a lot to improving human life. In my opinion, all academicians should start their journals alone or in a group.