Video: Is Open Access Better than Subscription-based Journals?

One of the questions that most researchers struggle with is whether they should publish in open access journals or subscription-based journals. Does one trump over the other? Or are there benefits to both? In this video, Dr. Oliver Gruenvogel explores the significance of open access versus subscription-based journals.

Open access is better for increased chances of publication. “We are all frustrated if we can’t get a paper that’s behind a pay wall. If we are researchers and we pay to have our articles published. We then review for free for the same publishing company, and then we pay again to access the articles, which is kind of ridiculous. So open access is preferred for scientific work, because the principle of science is founded on that.”

The published results are used by others who will further develop on it and continue contributing to taking the knowledge further in the field. Ideally, this is how science should works. From the perspective of getting published and gaining accessibility, open access is better. Yet, there are limitations.

Dr. Gruenvogel observes that not all of the journals preferred by authors, because of their good reputation or high impact factor, are open access. Even if they are, they could be only partially open access and authors may be charged to make certain papers open access. This gets a lot more expensive than just the regular article processing fees, which are already pretty high. So publishers make good money on that.

But what’s important for authors? “Most of the time it is valuable to still invest the money for open access because open access papers, on average, get a lot more reads and a lot more citations because people can actually afford to read them. You can see them when you search on PubMed or on other websites and you can read them fully. So you get more reads and more citations.”

Another factor that plays a role is the budget. Check with your funding agencies or your institution for any availability of additional open access budgets. A lot of institutions set aside a campaign to push for more open access publishing, and it is worth to try it.