Open access scholarly journals: Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a definition of open access journals, present the main actors in open access e-publishing and help you to find open access journals and papers.

Glossary

APC (Article Processing Charges)
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APCs are fees charged by hybrid journals (fully accessible to subscribers but including some open access articles) to enable authors to publish open access articles in these journals. Depending on the journal and the publisher, these fees can vary between a few tens of euros to 3 or 4 thousand euros per article.
Author-pays model
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The author-pays model refers to the approach whereby it is the authors, the institution to which they belong or the research funder who pays the publisher to ensure open and free access to the articles for any reader. It may be considered the opposite of the reader-pays model, which is the traditional publishing model.
Citation
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A citation is when authors make reference to another article in their own articles. All citations are usually listed in the bibliography at the end of the citing article. Citations are used to measure an article’s impact and calculate a journal’s impact factor.
Creative Commons
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Licences proposed by the Creative Commons organisation are model contracts in which authors specify the rights associated with the document they are writing. They can select one of six licences that are all based on four basic elements: authorship, amendment, commercial use and reuse under the terms of the original licence. These licences can apply to any type of work.
Embargo
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"An embargo is a period during which a document deposited in an open archive is not freely accessible. Most often, the embargo results from a compromise between the organisation asking for the depositing of the document and the publisher that has published the document. Synonym: moving wall" [translated from the INIST website, Open Access glossary]
Epijournals
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Epijournals are open access journals assembled using articles detected in open archives where preprints can be deposited. These articles are then reviewed by the editorial boards of these epijournals and made openly accessible.
Golden road, gold road, gold OA or golden road to Open Access
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"The golden road refers to the approach whereby articles are published in Open Access journals. It is the number two strategy recommended by the Budapest Open Access Initiative: ‘Open-access Journals: Second, scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access.’ " [translated from the INIST Open Access glossary]
Green road, green OA, green road to Open Access
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"Green road refers to the approach whereby researchers self-archive their articles in open archives. It is the number one strategy recommended by the Budapest Open Access Initiative: ‘Self-archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called, self-archiving.’" [translated from the INIST Open Access glossary]
Hybrid model
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Some publishers charge authors or their research funders a fee for publishing open access articles. In such a journal, two types of articles can therefore exist: open access articles and articles only accessible to subscribers. This is referred to as the hybrid model.
Impact factor
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The impact factor was devised by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). It applies to journals but is based on the citations of the articles within these journals. For year N, the impact factor is the ratio of the number of times the articles published in a journal during the years N-1 and N-2 were cited to the number of articles published in the journal during these two years. A ranking list is drawn up by scientific field and each journal is ranked.
Moving wall
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See: Embargo
Open Access
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"By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." [Source: Budapest Open Access Initiative]
Open access journals
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"An Open Access journal is a new or existing journal whose articles meet quality requirements as they are reviewed by peers but whose funding method allows for information to be disseminated as widely as possible with unrestricted access and use. " [translated from the INIST website, Open Access glossary]
Open Access publication
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"An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions: 1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. 2. A complete version of the work and all supplementary materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository)." (source: the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing)
Open archive
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"An open archive or open access repository is a place where data acquired from scientific research and educational institutions is deposited with open access (barrier-free) to information. Such open access is made possible through the use of common protocols that facilitate access to the content of several repositories kept by various data providers". [translated from the INIST website, Open Access glossary]
Peer reviewing
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Peer reviewing is when an article is validated by a paper review board consisting of experts in the relevant research field. This process is meant to guarantee the article’s scientific quality.cientifique.
Predatory open access journals
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Predatory OA journals are journals that have opaque practices and whose reviewing process is insufficient (reviewers may not be experts or the reviewing process may be biased). Such journals seek to take maximum advantage of the new Open Access market rather than disseminate validated information on the web.
Reader-pays model
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The reader-pays model is the traditional publishing model, which involves a subscription fee. Readers can only access the published journals and books to which they (or in most cases their institution) have subscribed.

Topic

4.1 Open access to scientific information

Related guides

Definition of an Open Access journal

"An Open Access journal is a type of journal that appeared in the early 1990s. It is a new or existing journal whose articles meet quality requirements as they are reviewed by peers but whose funding method allows the information to be disseminated as widely as possible with unrestricted access and use." [translated from the INIST website, Open Access glossary]

A component of the Open Access movement

According to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, "Open access to [scholarly]literature is its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, [...] or its use for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. " [ Translated from Open Access at l'IST - INIST)

This system whereby research results are made openly available on the Internet was defined in a founding document: the Budapest Open Access Initiative,(BOAI). The BOAI states the strategies to be implemented to boost the Open Access movement. Two strategies have been recommended:

· The green road, which refers to the self-archiving of publications by researchers.

· The golden road, which is the approach whereby articles are published in Open Access journals.

The founding documents

Why have Open Access journals?

Open Access journals probably emerged from several reasons

A lengthy traditional publishing process.
A restrictive copyright system (transfer of copyright to the publisher) that did not promote the use and reuse of scientific output to further research.
An excessive number of STM-dedicated publishers followed by an increase in the subscription fees of scholarly journals.
Barriers to access (subscriptions, pay per view, licences) that hindered the dissemination of scientific information.
Work funded by public organisations that is not openly and freely accessible by the community.

Subject Guide

Alexandre Serres

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Contact:

Université Rennes 2

Sujets: 1.5 Comment trouver ? Moteurs de recherche du web

To cite this guide

SERRES, Alexandre, SICOT, Julien. "Open access scholarly journals". In UBL (Université Européenne de Bretagne). Formadoct. Rennes: UBL, February 2010 (last updated on 3 July 2013). Available at:http://en.guides-formadoct.u-bretagneloire.fr//oa_scholarly_journals

Dernière mise à jour: Oct 13, 2020 2:25 PM
URL: https://formadoct.doctorat-bretagneloire.fr/open_access_journals
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Sujets: 4.1 Le Libre accès à l’information scientifique

Mots-clés: e-publishing, open access, scholarly journals