Open Access Myths
Marjorie Mitchell
Copyright, Scholarly Communications, & Research Data Management Librarian
Mathew Vis-Dunbar
Data & Digital Scholarship Librarian
2021-10-27
14 Open Access myths and claims debunked.
Claim 1
Open Access means an article is NOT copyrighted.
There is no direct and clean relationship between OA and copyright.
The same options exist when publishing OA as through a controlled-access model (or traditional subscription).
The author may be able to retain copyright, or be required to grant copyright to the journal publisher.
Claim 2
Open Access articles and journals are NOT peer-reviewed.
A journal's economic or access policy does not determine its peer review policy.
Most scholarly journals, whether OA or controlled-access, are peer-reviewed.
There are both open and controlled journals that are not peer-reviewed.
Claim 3
Open Access is free.
This depends on one's definition of free.
OA journals and articles are not free in the sense of free lunch.
They do aim to be free, however, in the sense of free speech.
Claim 4
Open Access is redundant. Research is already openly available enough.
Publisher policies often prevent all research from being made publicly available, and disciplines vary in their support for making pre- or post- prints available.
One 2006 study estimates that 15% of articles are made available "through spontaneous self-archiving" into institutional repositories.
A more recent study showed 73% of recent economics articles in 25 journals were available free through a Google search. This leaves 25% behind paywalls.
Claim 5
Open Access will inevitably harm scholarly societies.
OA as an economic model has a similar impact on all publishing bodies; success relies on all members of the scholarly community collaborating to build the best models for the digital age.
[Our] journals typically are viewed as offering high quality at reasonable cost, and there’s no reason that they shouldn’t continue to be highly competitive if one moves away from a reader-pays model.
– Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information
Claim 6
Open Access journals have lower impact factors.
There are high impact factor OA journals in a wide range of disciplines.
Comparing impact factors across disciplines is misleading.
You can review the Directory of Open Access Journals and review the titles' impact factors.
Claim 7
The only way to provide Open Access to peer-reviewed journal articles is to publish in Open Access journals.
There is more than one OA model. This claim assumes that all OA is Gold , even for peer-reviewed articles.
Gold = OA from date of publication
Green = OA repository deposit potentially with embargo period
Claim 8
All or most Open Access journals charge publication fees.
As of this week, DOAJ reports that more than 67% of all peer-reviewed open access journals charge no fees.
While publication fees - or article processing charges (APCs) - is the best-known business model for OA journals, it's far from the most common. Since 2006 most peer-reviewed OA journals charge no fees at all.
Claim 9
Most author-side fees are paid by the authors themselves.
According the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP)
- 59% of fees are paid by funders;
- 24% by universities; and
- 12% out of pocket by authors.
This is Gold OA only. Green OA is not fee based.
Perhpas "author fees" and "author pays" are not the best terms to describe this model.
More math…
33% of Gold OA peer-reviewed journals charge author-side fees. It follows that 4% of authors who publish OA pay out of pocket (12% of 33%).
~50% of articles in peer-reviewed open access journals are published in fee-based journals. If we count by article rather than journal, 6% of authors who publish OA (12% of 50%) pay out of pocket.
Claim 10
Publishing in a conventional journal closes the door to making the same work Open Access.
Most conventional publishers give standing permission for author-initiated Green OA.
Others will provide permission on request.
For authors unsure of a publisher's position, check out the Sherpa RoMEO database of publisher policies, read the publishing contract, or ask an editor.
Claim 11
Open Access journals are instrinsicly low in quality.
While predatory publishing is a thing, the quality of a scholarly journal is a function of its authors, editors, and referees, not its business model or access policy.
As early as 2004, Thomson Scientific found that in every field of the sciences "there was at least one open access title that ranked at or near the top of its field" in citation impact.
The number of high-quality and high-impact OA journals has only grown since then.
Claim 12
Open Access mandates infringe on academic freedom.
This is true for Gold OA but not for Green OA.
1/3 of peer-reviewed journals are OA. Requiring submission of new works to OA journals would limit freedom of choice.
However, Green OA is compatible with publishing in non OA journals. So Green OA mandates can respect author freedom of choice.
This is why university OA mandates are Green, not Gold.
Claim 13
If I publish Open Access I will get more (or fewer) citations.
The results vary significantly across disciplines.
SPARC Europe maintained a list of studies (2001-2015) that addressed this question. Out of 70 studies, 46 found a citation advantage to publishing OA.
Claim 14
Open Access is just a passing fad.
Some conventional wisdom may claim OA is simply "trendy" and likely to fail in the face of traditional publishing.
Recent data regarding OA, however, suggest otherwise.
In 2012, 8 602 journals were indexed in DOAJ. Today, that number stands at 17 016.
OA mandates have been issued by funding agencies such as the Tri-Agencies, NIH as well as individual research institutions including Harvard.
And that's a wrap.