Open access has pros and cons. For sure, making articles (and other knowledge products) free for all does increase readership, which may be particularly important in low-income countries where researchers recurrently explain that lack of access to subscription-based journals is a problem. That said, someone must still cover the cost of publication: where funds are scarce, this may discourage authors from going open access. Other disadvantages may include lack of quality control and sustainability: on the one hand, open access models may incentivize journals to publish more articles; on the other, they may not adequately support the research publication infrastructure in the long term.

Open access has pros and cons. For sure, making articles (and other knowledge products) free for all does increase readership, which may be particularly important in low-income countries where researchers recurrently explain that lack of access to subscription-based journals is a problem. That said, someone must still cover the cost of publication: where funds are scarce, this may discourage authors from going open access. Other disadvantages may include lack of quality control and sustainability: on the one hand, open access models may incentivize journals to publish more articles; on the other, they may not adequately support the research publication infrastructure in the long term.

Yes free to access and free of cost too

There is no free lunch, someone has to pay. Most (roughly all) open access journals charge hefty fees to authors. Many authors don’t have funds or grant funding to afford paying publication fees. So the answer is NO.

In my view ,like open source software's, Journals must also be open access and free of cost.

Too expensive. I also think that a low quality paper should not be published in the open access journal. The OA journals are not always good.

Hi,

Theoretically, this is a nice thought. However, the publishers of these journals invest considerable sums of money to edit the journals where the scientific papers appear, and they must have something in return, and hence the subscription fees and copyrights limitations.