Determinants of the Adoption for Open Access Journals Model - Research Paper Example

? A Research Paper Determinants of the Adoption for Open Access Journals Model College Introduction: (222) The aim for this research project is to explore the factors that affect the adoption of an Open Access (OA) journal model. This includes identifying the motivations as well as obstacles to the adoption. Open Access began during the 1990s, and since the year 2000, there have been new Open Access publishers coming online such as BioMedCentral, Public Library of Science, Hindawi and Bentham Open (Bjork, Welling, Laakso, Majlender, Hedlund, & Guonason, 2010, web). Ratings for search engine hits on OA papers in 2008, ranged from Earth Sciences as the highest sought-after search request at 33%, to the lowest search terms on Chemistry at 13% (Bjork et al., 2010, web). The concept of OA allows for more people interested in research findings to obtain information on the latest study results in their field of choice and to provide access to the general public who wish to educate themselves further on major issues of the day without incurring heavy financial costs and time spent physically researching information at the library (Bjork et al., 2010, web). There has not been very much research done as to how common OA is today and how often, and even how quickly, new studies are published in OA repositories, and this would be an excellent study for current research funders, university administrators and publishers (Bjork et al., 2010, web). 2. Overview of the Open Access: (268) The scholarly electronic publications have two main business models; it can be a commercial access or open access model. The commercial publishing model is when the data can be obtained by purchasing or by signing up for a subscription to the single journal or sets of packages. Most of the digital scholarly commercial journals have requirements for readers to subscribe or purchase a subscription in order to access the content. Subsequently, the use of the Open Access (OA) publishing model allows the resources to be freely available and accessible to all end?users through the public internet without financial, legal, or technical barriers (Park, 2007, 15). There are two approaches or paths for the Open Access publishing model. They are the green path and gold path (Laakso, 2011, web). The green path (self?archiving) is open and accesses repositories where the researcher or the author can submit their publications to the repositories with or without peer review process. Consequently, the resource can be accessible free of charge (Park, 2007, 15). The gold path is for open access to scholarly journals, where the peer review content of the digital journals can be accessible to public without payment. This gold path comes in different forms based on the degree of accessibility that include the following: • Direct Open Access: when the entire content of the journal can be available and accessible for free. • Delayed open access: when the recent content of the journal can be freely accessible after a period of time about (12?24) months. • Hybrid: when the author tends to pay for his publication to be freely accessible to the public (Laakso, 2011, web). 3 The Motivation and the obstacles of the Open access journal model: literature review This research takes a look at a number of papers found, and reviews the methods and identified issues for publication, motivation, economic value, business continuity, impact (citation), and author perceived benefits. The obstacles reference low business benefits, lack of indexing services and copyright issues. Authors Method Identified Issues Advantages Disadvantages Chen Chi Chang (2006) Based on a review of the academic literature -Low cost associated with open access journals. -Improve the impact factor (citation) -Positive attitude of digital archives. -Lack of indexing services. -Low business benefit. Elena Gigila (2010) -Improve the impact factor (citation) Steffen Bernius, Matthias Hanause, Wolfgang Konig, Berndt Dugail (2009) -Positive impact of OA on citation counts. -Guarantees constant payment flows for publisher Sha Li Zhang (2007) Viewpoint -Citation from author prospective (Obvious benefits for authors, quickly and widely disseminate their research) Nane Turk (2008) Based on a literature review Open Access itself does not necessarily provide more citations. Access only allows the articles to be read by a large number of scientists, who will then judge the quality of work. Fig. 1 (Author created) Based on the above literature, we develop a preliminary model illustrating the aggregated factors of Open Access adoption in Figure 1. Aggregated Factors of Open Access Adoption Fig.2. (Author created) 3.1 The Factors that Affect the Open Access Adoption (1800-2000) 3.1.1 Motivations Economic value: (305) ok The economic value of OA publishers is realized first through the ability of interested readers to gain free access to those articles needed for research purposes in academia and for further research studies (Bernius, Hanause, Konig & Dugail, 2009, 103). Traditionally, commercial publishers charged subscription fees which made it expensive for most students to access unless their own educational institution subscribed to it. But in a time of budget cutbacks, this fee-based approach has become dysfunctional (Scheiber, 2009, 1). As an offshoot of benefits in today’s advances in electronic publishing, the costs therefore, have become far cheaper to publish articles and subsequently, far less is needed to actually run the technical side of operations. For authors, while there is no actual remuneration from publishing in an OA journal, the returns come from actual publication of the work and being recognized for the work involved in the study (Kennan, 2011, 303). This also leads to building the professional background needed when applying for further grants and funding in expanded research studies in the future. At the most, an author may pay a small fee to self-archive his work or maybe to have his work published in the OA, but the returns, particularly, in publishing in a quick timely fashion, certainly outweighs publishing in a closed or commercial operation which would have far fewer subscribers. Publishing in an OA also means opportunities to publish in other OA journals unless there are copyright issues involved, which is usually not the case (Kennan, 2011, 303). In addition to the free subscriptions, when OA publishers gain a reputation, that will attract more submissions from reputable authors which keeps the value of that OA viable and able to also attract funding necessary to develop further operations and to also have more to market with when approaching funding opportunities (Mercieca, 2012, 3). Business continuity: (312) Originally, commercial journals had subscription fees which would provide the income for operations of the journal. Newer professional OA publishers will typically charge the authors of the articles, which reverses the business model from content selling to dissemination service providers, with the authors as the clients rather than the subscribers (Bjork et al., 2010, web; Gaule & Maystre, 2011, 1332). In setting up an OA journal, there are many things to be considered such as whether to base it on a hard copy version or just put it on the internet where it can be accessed more easily by a greater number of readers. Along with this goes the cost of administering a subscription service, which may offset the value of putting the journal online. In more cases than not, it is far cheaper to make a new online journal an OA, which would allow academics to spend more time overseeing the quality of research articles being provided first. As one aspect of such publications, it is more important to make sure that those being published are those with a reputation and not those authors trying to build one (Mercieca, 2012, 2). In reality, creating OA journals has a number of costs associated with it such as the electronic publisher overseeing the actual implementation, hosting of the journal, creating search engine optimization (SEO) throughout the online website, imbedding reference links and any other marketing and promotion activities which must take place to be competitive and be considered a serious operation, even if a small publisher (Mercieca, 2012, 2). The most likely institution to create an OA publication is a university which can, more often than not, absorb the costs through its operational budgets and it also provides a way for affiliated professors and researchers to have access to publishing their works as well rather than having to branch out to find a suitable OA (Mercieca, 2012, 3). Impact factors (citation): (340) Impact Factor is a bibliometric indicator for determining how published pieces are being received and accessed over a period of time. However, it has only been tested on OA journals up to 2010 and is certainly not free of criticisms and reservations and is dependent on who is making those viewpoints (Giglia, 2010, 16). Other indicators are Immediacy Index and the 5-year Impact Factor can be used as well when conducting research on this topic. Citation factors are also part of the equation in some analyses (Gaule et al., 2011, 1333). Essentially, when determining the Impact Factor, it can be defined by what degree the ideas in the published piece, contribute further knowledge and ‘impact the thinking of others’ (Giglia, 2010, 16; Grozanick, 2010, 391). Impact Factor can also be measured or interpreted on the citation quality, relevance, the influence of new thinking processes, and originality of the work. How to measure this, however, has proven to be a little difficult if one bases it on how many times the article is downloaded, and when, and how the article was brought up in search terms as well. As social media has now provided methods of behind-the-scenes data analysis, this can also be applied to any website in viewing visitor metrics and conducting analysis of how visitors made their searches for specific articles. Research shows that availability and ease of accessing the article are key criteria for citing an article (Giglia, 2010, 19). As shown in Giglia’s (2010) research, the Impact Factor of a journal is “the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR (Journal Citation Reports) year and that it is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of article published in the two previous years” (Giglia, 2010, 20). In final results, OA journals rank in the top 50%, with a 38.62% share if looking at the Impact Factor with Medicine as the top ranking category (Giglia, 2010, 28). Author perceived benefit: (328) With OA, this provides the opportunity to publish in a more timely fashion, especially for research which is ground breaking news and would benefit others who are in need of the information, such as medical researchers (Giglia, 2010, 16). Obviously, being cited on a continuous basis is also a huge benefit in terms of being recognized as an expert in the field (Bernius, Haanauske, Konig, & Dugall, 2009, 106). The reputation cycle is centered on the interaction between scientific authors and journal publishers. The better a publishing journal is perceived in the general market, the better the scientific author will fare as far as building on one’s reputation (Bernius et al., 2009, 105). The model below shows the path of interaction between scientists, publishers and libraries as a main component of the interactive pathway (Bernius et al., 2009, 105). This viewpoint presents the quickest way to receive citation benefits and a better system of disseminating the research to more people over a wider area, even in a global capacity (Zhang, 2007, 230). Librarians also play a large part as keepers and disseminators of information over decades. Most open access proponents will agree that scholarly literature should be freely available online and it does seem ridiculous to keep it secret or hidden, especially if research funding was provided by the government. The only time research should be kept secret is if it is a classified research project sponsored by the government for a specific group within the government. Knowledge of findings would be on a need-to-know basis. If a government is interested in the education of its people, young or old, then free access should be provided to all, regardless of economic social standing (Zhang, 2007, 231). Indeed, if one were to think of a situation where research should be paid for in order to access it, then perhaps authoring a book instead might be the best way to go. 3.1.2 Obstacles: Low business benefit (239) The down side to publishing in an OA publication is that authors’ fees may go up to the point where it is not economically viable to publish in a certain repository. In cases, where a journal does not have a commercial subscription service, operations income must come from somewhere in order to remain viable and this could be in the form of public grants, endowments, or other gifts (Scheiber, 2009, 3). Authors sometimes wait to see if others will use a certain journal repository before stepping onboard themselves. Potentially, this could turn into a waiting game while each waits to see who will move first (Bernius et al., 2009, 108). Yet the citation advantage shows that OA is more advantageous than going with a traditional subscription-based journal where there will be far less ‘hits.’ Alternatively, there is the case of the topology group that broke away from Elsevier’s journal, “Topology,” the complaint was that prices were too high and so the group left and started its own “Topology” journal, citing that dissemination of information was far more important, and they lowered their subscription price to be far more competitive than Elsevier’s (Bernius et al. 2009, 111). However, there is also the group of professional researchers who have always done things one way and do not want to change procedures, or else had other objections to moving to an OA publication, whether for professional or financial reasons (Kennan, 2011, 308). Lack of indexing services (230) In some cases, there is a definite lack of efficient indexing services which makes it harder to locate specific subject material that is a scholarly work rather than someone’s thesis. In such a case, when professional researchers are a preferred source for materials, this can become quite difficult to get, especially when initially identifying who wrote the study (Chang, 2006, 703). Therefore, the lack of a fully indexed service is seen as a drawback, especially for producers who must pay to publish. There are some authors who will resist this route as they are more used to the traditional journalistic method of publication and think this OA is too much towards the ‘new kid on the block’ type of arrangement. Or they do not understand the concept of self-archiving or even the process of key words within a document which would help search engines find their work better and faster. In many cases, to go cheaper is to learn how to do some of the necessary processes of indexing oneself (Zhang, 2007, 230). Efficient indexing services would most likely be found in large university arrangements but it could be a potential problem for those OA publications which do not have that type of funding such as smaller institutions, or even a group of scholars who go out on their own to create a new OA (Walters & Wilder, 2007, 623). Copyright (252) One of the issues is that of constrained copyright laws whereby an author may only publish in one journal exclusively. This limits the availability of access by a more generalized readership (Chang, 2006). It is also a detrimental component to publishing when information is needed which should be accessed by anyone who is interested and this would also mean being able to access it from another journalistic database or repository (Cuel, Ponte, & Rossi, 2009, 8). In the process of restricting and holding back information which is important to global society, this also restricts the freedom of thought and the right to educate oneself with truthful findings rather than relying on news reports which are not always correct (Cuel et al., 2009, 8). Yet, when an author has a copyright agreement to one scientific journal, it then means that only those institutions which subscribe to that journal, will have access to that author’s paper. This means a very limited viewing of the paper and a far less building of the author’s reputation. Some of the worst offenders of copyright issues have been the large textbook publishers, such as Elsevier and others, who have monopolized the market as part of the educational materials provided in different subjects for online course research work or as supplemental readings. Yet, these should be made available on the open market and in some instances, the large textbook publishers also restrict library access as well, a venue which should be open to all the public (Odlyzko, 2013, 1). Conclusion: (272) Open Access has already proven to make a positive impact on the availability of important scholarly papers to the general public and should also cause academic publishers, such as Elsevier, to rethink their current business strategy and copyright policies regarding access to scholarly papers. Certainly in the case of publicly funded research papers and accessing these through OA publications, it is considered only right that the public should then reap the benefits of their own money by obtaining these articles for free. While funding for the operations of these OA publications is still up in the air, obtaining grants and private donations from the wealthy is certainly one of the best ways to go for now. Government support is also an option so long as there are no limitations on what could be published within the OA publications. While authors do not financially benefit directly in revenues from publishing with OA publications, there is really no downside to doing so as it can only help their reputation as an authority in their field when they are published and their work easily accessed through multiple streams. The largest problem noted during this research is the issue of funding, which for entities, other than the large well-funded universities, could be precarious unless a suitable system of donors is built. Such funding does take time to build up but making sure to bring in big business is a definite possibility that should be explored as well. As there are many wealthy patrons of the arts in any large city, so there could be wealthy business donors who would be happy to fund scholarly OA publications. Resources Bernius, S., Hanause, M., Konig, W., & Dugail, B. (2009). Open access models and their implications for the players on the scientific publishing market. Economic Analysis & Policy, 39(1). Retrieved from http://www.eap?journal.com/archive/v39_i1_8_bernius.pdf Bjork, B.C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P. Hedlund, T., & Guonason, G.N. (2010). Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009. In Scalas, E. (ed.), PLOS ONE 6(6). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2890572/ Bryd, G.D., Bader, S.A., & Mazzaschi, A.J. (2005). The status of open access publishing by academic societies. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 93(4), 423-424. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1250315/ Chang, C.C. (2006). Business models for open access journals publishing. Online Information Review, 30(6), 699-713. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14684520610716171 Cuel, R., Ponte, D. & Rossi, A. (2009). Towards an Open/Web 2.0 Scientific Publishing Industry? Preliminary Findings and Open Issues. 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PLOS One, 6(6), e20961. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020961 Mercieca, P. (2012). Beyond open access: An examination of Australian academic publication behavior. (PhD thesis). Business IT and Logistics, RMIT University. Moskovkin, V.M. (2008). Institutional policies for open access to the results of scientific research. Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 35(6), 269-273. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3103/S0147688208060075 Odlyzko, A. (2013). Open access, library and publisher competition, and the evolution of general commerce. University of Minnesota. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2211874 Park, J. (2007). Factories influencing the adoption of open access publishing. Syracuse University. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 262. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/304768968?accountid=13552 Schieber, S.M. (2009). Equity for open-access journal publishing. PLOS Biology, 7(8), e1000165. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000165 Turk, N. (2008). Citation impact of open access journals. New Library World, 109(1), 65-74. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03074800810846010 Walters, W.H., & Wilder, E.I. (2007). The cost implications of open- access publishing in the life sciences. Biosciences, 57(7), 619-625. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216480721?accountid=13552 Zhang, S.L. (2007). The flavors of open access. OCLC Systems and Services, 23(3), 229-234. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10650750710776332 Read More