On last week’s blog post, we talked about practical steps to selecting the right journal for your research papers. If you missed it, you can read it here: 7 Tips for Choosing a Journal to Publish your Scientific Paper.
 
This week, we’ll talk about the pros and cons of Open Access (OA) versus Traditional Publishing journals. First, the definitions: Traditionally-published journals are mostly funded through subscriptions or advertising.  In the OA publication model, scholarly journals make their content freely available online to all readers without needing a subscription, pay-per-download or other fees.  The cost of publication is still paid by someone, either the journal is OA because it is subsidized (by a government entity, professional society, or the like), or the publication costs are paid by you, the author of the research paper. 
                       
But the OA system has spawned a darker side, the world of “predatory journals”.  For more on ways to tell whether you are dealing with a “predatory” journals, read this 10 Signs you are Dealing with a Predatory Journal.    
 
Note that here we are talking about legitimate OA journals. These are journals that have adopted a fully OA financial model or give authors the choice to publish in a traditional format or an OA format for a fee.  Examples of legitimate OA journals are the PLoS journals (Public Library of Science journals).  In contrast, traditionally published journals can only be accessed by readers who have a subscription or access to a subscription (such as people who have access to a well-stocked biomedical library), in which case, the library pays for an institutional subscription to which members have access. 
 
So, here is the smack down, some of the pros and cons of OA vs traditional publishing. 

• Pay to Publish vs Free to You, But Not to Your Readers

 The first, glaring issue is the costs, which for legitimate OA journals are significant.  To start, many OA journals first charge APCs (Article Processing Charges).  This fee is intended to cover peer review-related costs and editorial staff. The APC business model has grown rapidly since BioMedCentral and the PLoS pioneered it back in the early 2000’s. But, the biggest sticker shock for many aspiring research authors is in the “post-acceptance fees”. Once a paper is reviewed, revised and accepted for publication, some leading scientific OA journals, can charge anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 for publishing your paper. Some journals do offer full or partial waivers tailored to accept papers from authors who are unable to make this payment. However, this is not always the norm, and I am not sure what happens to a paper that is accepted for publication but the author is unable or unwilling to pay the post-acceptance fee.  If this has happened to you, leave write about your experience in the comments section below.
 
Bottom line is this: read all of the fine print and if you decide to attempt to publish in an OA journal, so that you know the fees upfront.  If you decide that this OA journal is right for your papers, make sure that you have funds for publication charges in your budget.  I can’t tell you how many times students and collaborators have come to me after submitting a paper to a journal asking if we have funds available for its publication.  You should always check on this before submitting your papers. If you have the funds and it’s worth it to you, be prepared to pay.

• High Visibility vs Only Accessible to Subscribers

There are two primary reasons why you may want to choose OA, if the costs are not an issue to you.  The first one is high visibility.  There are several studies summarized in this article in Nature that suggest that papers published in OA journals are viewed more often and have more downloads than those published traditionally.  There is also some evidence to show that the higher visibility that OA provides may lead to higher number of citations. Number of citations has become increasingly important as a measure of a scientist’s scholarly output.  Measures such as the h-index are supposed as indicators of a scientist’s productivity and the impact of their research.  Having publications that get cited in other publications increases your h-index, which may be important to some research professionals and their academic institutions.
The second reason that you may choose OA (if money is no object to you) is that your paper will be accessible to everyone, whether they are associated with a well-funded medical library or not.  Open access puts your paper in the hands of anyone with an internet connection and the interest in your research topic.  This can be very important, particularly in a number of fields.  For example, one of my areas of research is global health.  I know that many of my research collaborators live in developing countries that do not have access to a fully-funded medical library.  Publishing in OA reduces the financial barriers to readers, increasing accessibility to all, regardless of their ability to pay. Depending on your field of study and your goals, it may be that it is important to you that your paper be read by a wide audience, although this may not be so important for papers that are super specialized in highly technical research areas.

• Speed of Publication vs a Long ‘Paper Wait’

 The time it takes between submission and publication, the paper wait, can be long, sometimes even ridiculously long.  Many factors contribute to the paper wait, particularly the fact that reviewers, the “peers” in the peer-review process, are busy people and can take a long time to submit their critiques.  With long periods of time needed for publication being the norm, the OA format is very attractive to authors looking to cut down on valuable wait time for their papers to be published.
 
Though the publishing process will always entail some wait time, authors wanting to get published faster may gravitate positively towards OA journals, which use speedy publication as part of their marketing effort. Although they don’t provide exact timeframes, a study in which 135 journals listed in the Scopus Citation Index were examined showed that OA journals had a shorter time between acceptance and publication as compared to traditional publishing.

• Is Open Access Worth It Then?

It really all depends on the writer, their goals, the topic of their research, their financial situation and the standpoint in their career.  One important thing to keep in mind is that subscription journals that publish in the traditional format still tend to have a higher level of prestige as measured by impact factors.  But, this seems to be changing due to the increasing quality of some of the OA journals.
So the question then is not so much which is better, open access or traditional publishing.  The question is which publication format is best for your particular paper at a particular time.  So, my advice to you is to review all aspects of the journals that you are considering for your research paper, weighing the pros and cons carefully before you submit your hard work to a journal.  To help you review your journal choices side-by-side, I’ve created a fill-in form.  You can download it for free HERE.   Hope that it will help you in choosing the best journal for your papers.
Happy publishing!
Dr. Luz Claudio is the author of the book: How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper: The Step-by-Step Guide, a workbook that teaches you precisely what to do and when to do it when writing scientific papers. She is a tenured professor of preventive medicine and has mentored hundreds of students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. She blogs about life in academic research.
 
 
 
Sources:
 
1) Making the Choice: Open Access vs. Traditional Journals
http://www.aje.com/en/arc/making-the-choice-open-access-vs-traditional-journals/
 
 2) Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact
http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-73
 
 3) Explainer: Open access vs traditional academic journal publishers
http://theconversation.com/explainer-open-access-vs-traditional-academic-journal-publishers-2511
 
 4) Open Access at Nature Research
http://www.nature.com/openresearch/about-open-access/benefits-for-authors/
 
 5) OA Pros & Cons
http://www.openaccess.nl/en/what-is-open-access/pros-and-cons
  
6) Why Open Access?
https://www.plos.org/open-access
  
7) Assessing The Impact of Open Access
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_report.pdf
 
 8) Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Access
http://pacificejournals.com/advantages-disadvantages-open-access/
 
 9) Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1459247/
 
 10) Open Access Part I: The Movement, The Issues, and The Benefits
http://nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-17-2012/No1-Jan-2012/Articles-Previous-Topics/Open-Access-Part-I.html
 
 
 

On last week’s blogpost, we focused on tips for identifying “predatory journals”. Those are journals that exploit scientists' need to publish their research by charging publication fees to authors without providing legitimate peer-review or editorial services. If you have not read that blogpost, check it out here.
Now you know which journals to avoid. Let's talk now about how to choose the right journal for your paper.
Given the vast number of scientific journals out there, (as of today, there are 5,635 indexed in Medline, the publisher of PubMed) choosing the right journal for your paper may seem like a daunting task, but it’s one of the key factors that will determine whether your paper gets published or not. Here are 7 things to consider when making your selection.
1. Consider the journals you have cited most in your paper’s list of references: It may be a great starting point to look at the journals that published the articles you’re using as background information for your research paper. Notice if many of those papers have been published in the same journal. If so, then you may want to consider this journal as a possible option for your own publication because it may mean that they tend to publish papers in your area of research.
2. Look into the journals published by an organization that you belong to, such as a professional society: You may have presented an abstract of the paper you’re trying to publish at a conference of a professional society. Notice that many professional societies not only organize scientific conferences but also publish a journal. This journal may be a great fit for your paper because they may have already published your abstract and it may be a journal that is read by your peers who may also be members of this organization. 
3. Consider journals that cater to the professional group that you want to reach: Think about who may be the experts most interested in your research. Will you be catering to academic researchers, public health practitioners, health care providers? Keep in mind that the content and information within your paper should be as relevant and helpful as possible to the specific audience of experts you’re targeting. The audience you ar trying to reach may or may not be very similar to you. For example, you may be a basic scientist, but a particular paper that you are working on has applied clinical implications. In that case, you may want to send this paper to a journal that is read by clinicians. Thus, ask yourself if there is a journal that caters to the specific group of professionals who would most benefit from reading your paper.
4. Factor in the “impact factor”: A journal’s impact factor is a measure of its influence within the scientific community. When choosing a journal for publishing, you should consider that some journals are more prestigious than others. For example, Science, Nature and Cell are considered to be some of the most prestigious journals out there. Having publications in these journals is regarded as equivalent or even more valuable than having a lot of publications in journals with lower impact factors; in fact, that’s what some of the most respected scientists do, it’s a quality over quantity type of approach. However, for most scientists, it is best to take a realistic approach to choosing a journal. Overshooting to a high impact factor journal can be a waste of time if your paper is not at that level. Be realistic and choose a journal that has a good impact factor that is within your reach for that particular paper. 
5. Make sure that you are considering journals that publish the type of paper you want to write: There are several types of research papers such as reviews, case studies, commentaries, in addition to original research papers. For instance, if you are planning to write a case study, and the journal that you are aiming for doesn’t publish those, you need to find another journal. So make sure that the type of paper you are aiming to write fits what the journal usually accepts. 
6. Check out the amount of time it takes from submission to publication: This is an item that is often overlooked, but it is important. Not all journals publish at the same pace. Whether a journal is slow or relatively fast to publication may be more or less of a factor to you depending on your particular situation. For example, you may need a relatively fast publication because you are finishing a training program or you are coming up for promotion.
To compare the relative pace of publication between journals that you are considering, make sure to check out how often the journal is published. Is it a weekly, monthly, or quarterly publication? A second consideration is the amount of time it takes between submission and publication, termed the "paper wait" (for more on this, check out this blogpost).  To determine this paper wait, you can take a look at articles that were recently published in the journal. On the title page, there should be the date of submission and the date the article was accepted. This will give you an idea of how long the journal takes to review, accept and publish submitted papers. 
7. Open Access or not: Open access refers to the practice of journals to charge the authors for publishing their papers. This allows the journal to make the paper available to all readers online, regardless of whether they have a subscription. The topic of open access is complicated, so I think I will write a separate blogpost on this. For now, suffice it to say that it should be one of the factors that you need to consider when choosing a journal. To clarify, we are talking here about high-quality open access, not the predatory type we talked about in the earlier post. Many legitimate journals are now offering an open access option in addition to the traditional publication format. Authors may be asked to choose whether they want to pay for open access after the paper has been properly reviewed and accepted. As you consider whether to go open access or not, keep in mind that the costs can be quite high, I have paid about $3,000 for open access of one of my papers. So if this is not in your budget, don’t do it. You may still consider the journal for traditional publication if they offer that option.


After applying all seven of these considerations, you may have narrowed down the candidates that you are considering to two or three possible journals. I have created a fill-in form that will help you compare your journal choices side-by-side.  The form can be helpful as you go over the advantages and disadvantages of each journal choice and also can help you in your decision-making process as you present your journal options to your collaborators and advisors.
To download a free copy of the journal comparison fill-in forms, go to https://www.writescientificpapers.com/free-fill-in-forms.html  

Dr. Luz Claudio is the author of the book: How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper: The Step-by-Step Guide, a workbook that teaches you precisely what to do and when to do it when writing scientific papers. She is a tenured professor of preventive medicine and has mentored hundreds of students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. She blogs about life in academia.
Additional Resources:
1)  Choosing the Right Journal for Your Research
http://www.aje.com/en/arc/choosing-right-journal-your-research/
2)  The Thomson Reuters Impact Factor
http://wokinfo.com/essays/impact-factor/
3)  Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Journal Impact Factor (IF) http://researchguides.uic.edu/if/impact
4)  Selecting a journal to publish in
http://www.lib.vt.edu/find/journals/select-journal-publish.html
5)  Tips for finding the right journal
https://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/find-the-right-journal