Library

Positives

The ability to distribute academic research findings more quickly and extensively is the main advantage of open access:

1. The outcomes of scholarly research are now more widely available for reading, reaching individuals who might not otherwise have access to them due to financial constraints such as an expensive journal subscription.

2. The spread of new ideas, which in turn stimulates new research projects, can increase knowledge more quickly and broadly.

3. Scientific studies clearly demonstrate that publishing under open access increases citations and impact due to its global visibility and barrier-free distribution.
4. Additionally, companies have easy access to the newest scientific concepts, which they can further develop. Open access stimulates the economy and adds to the knowledge economy.

5. Recent information can be immediately applied to teaching as a “open educational resource” because open availability also means wider reuse.

6. Open access will result in cost savings, according to studies looking at the economic advantages for countries like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Open access will cost more during the transitional period, however this is only a temporary situation.

The limitations
Many drawbacks affect researchers, most of which are associated with the shift to the open access publication model. Researchers themselves only profit concretely from the additional effort required in the long run. This influences how much importance they place on converting to this new publication strategy.

The limitations that they encounter are:
1. Researchers are evaluated based on their capacity to publish in journals with a high impact factor, particularly in the fields of economics, science, and medicine. Nonetheless, it requires some time for newly established journals—both open access and traditional—to obtain an impact factor. Researchers won’t be interested in them till then. Furthermore, the impact factor has been a topic of controversy recently, and the VSNU is looking for an alternative approach to value and compensate scientists.
Within each discipline, there is a huge variation in the quantity of excellent, fully open access publications. Very few or none at all exist in some disciplines.

2. Delivering manuscripts to traditional journals may normally be accomplished easily online, however publishing in open access journals occasionally requires additional administration.
The majority of research institutes have not yet established procedures for the payment of Author Processing Charges (APCs) during this transitional time. For researchers, this means extra, frequently significant expenses. Inquiring about this is advisable because many colleges these days provide funding for publications that are available to the public.

3. Researchers may get spam from open access publishers that are frequently of questionable quality, referred to as “predatory journals,” which may affect how they see the open access publication model. Separating the wheat from the chaff requires work. Enhancements are made to the databases to more clearly display the calibre of open-access publications. One of the following databases may have assessed your journal before it was published.

4. Whether the texts of papers in repositories can actually be published in open access is frequently unclear. Copyright barriers do occasionally exist. Researchers may question if the extra work will yield the intended outcome.

Publish work that is open access without implying:

1. You, the writer, will waive copyright protection;
2. Your work will be released without being subjected to peer review;
3. academic databases won’t index your publication;
4. There won’t be an impact factor for your publication.

A variety of target groups, including researchers, instructors, students, administrators, and publishers, place a high value on open access. See the section on Your Role on this website for the particular advantages of open access for these organisations.

Find more information here.

Green OA
When works are self-archived for unrestricted public use, they are referred to as green open access (OA) publishing. Authors make preprints and postprints available (with publisher consent) in disciplinary or institutional repositories like arXiv.org.

Gold OA
Published works in open access journals that can be viewed through the publisher’s website or the journal itself are referred to as gold OA publishing. Public Library of Science (PLOS) and BioMed Central are two examples of Gold Open Access.