Is it worth publishing in such open excess journals, most of which are not even indexed. What about their credibility in terms of research dissemination or they are mere introduced to earn bucks as most of these journals are paid and the authors have to pay lump-some of money.
Generally, Open Access Journals yield more exposure since they are free as opposed to paper Journals which due to the economic crunch, are so expensive that many Universities have dropped many that they have carried for decades.
The worth of any Open Access Journal (OAJ) lies in its Editorial Board and its Senior Editors. I am a member of several such boards and the quality of the editorial process has, in my opinion, exceeded that of paper journal with impact factors of 3. It has also been my experience that the citations generated from publishing in OAJs is much higher. However, because the major index services do not at first cover OPJs until the their citation record is beyond their threshold level, to recover citations of OAJ publications require some effort through Google (advanced searches), etc. Interestingly, Scopus seems to have a better record for indexing OPJs than Web of Science. But this may change.
My advice? If you have real new and exciting work to report, stick with a proven Journal whether it be OAJ or paper journal.
Lastly. please remember what I was told by an old professor more than 50 years ago: "If it has not been published, it has not been done. If it has not been cited, it has not been done." Citations are the key to the progress of science.
Dear Sir,
They are only making money on the name of open access. Their reviewing process is very poor as mostly send same type of comments, we can not rely on except few articles and some are very badly written even not formatted properly. Once submitted you get the acceptance 4-5 days after.........rest you can understand. There is no regulation on the number of journals and quality of journals. As I already discussed in my question that why should a researcher (who work hard and spend money in research) has to pay money on the name of open access. IS it only the responsibility of him to make it open access.
"Scientific business" really gained great popularity in recent decade. The second most successful of which is a journal making. As the number of researchers increase the more journals are needed to publish everything. Yet all of them are based on blind review, the quality is varying from very low to very high and one can soon or later publish his/her work in any case. So it seems to me that this system is going to collapse.
The most popular scientific business - language editing is even more interesting. Currently it is possible to edit, review, format manuscript before submitting. Soon, I believe there will be a service when one can pay and purchase high quality research manuscript with guaranteed publishing :)))
I agree ...These kind of seasonal journals bloom like weeds and perish very quickly. they don't have any credibility. One should be aware before submitting in these journals!!
Apart the needs to make known and available your work, there is a need of citation. Today, citation is everything, more than food, clothes, health and so on :)) Since there is a google scholar which is indexing everything (probably including old hard-copy papers kept in basement shelves:))) one better publish his/her work which at least will be cited in the same journal. After some time journal may accumulate enough authority to be included in ISI. Actually, many journals doing so.
This is almost classical form of struggling for existence and sellection
ya you are right Levan Mumladze.....recently I found one Springer open access journal launched in 2011.....that charge nothing....its good indeed....one in Oxford press (AOB Plants)...but I dont know till when ??? that are indexed in pubmed, google scholar and soo on but not in SCI/THOMPSON till date. Yes, the numbers are too less.
Thanks everyone for this interesting & important discussion. Even, I have doubts in the peer- review system for most of these journals..!!
In current competitive environment (Publish-or-perish) there is lot of pressure on researchers to publish. This led to a situation, where any paper, however bad, can now be printed in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed. The only people who benefit from the intense pressure to publish are those in the publishing industry. Hardly a day passes without a new journal starting. My email inbox is full of invitations to publish in a variety of journals. They'll publish everything, worth or not.
But it isn't only quack journals that have failures in peer review.
More can be read on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/05/publish-perish-peer-review-science
Yes Of-course the open access journals have poor peer review process (Not all) but i think they are necessary. I take them as K. G. of Research publication process. For starters these are the best platforms where they can showcase their skills.
When you start your education you never start with making sentences but learning alphabets. Many of us have scored 90-95% marks in our lower standards but they never reflects the actual caliber of a candidate similarly publications from such journals are not to access (Not always) the research aptitude of a person but we can consider him/her a beginner who have passed KG standards.
Slowly improving the peer review process is the sole responsibility of Journal authorities to keep their shop open and credible and if not, they will loose their credibility and market but also their existence feeds the publication needs of a general candidate which is important to make a raw into talent.
I disagree @Namdeo. If the published articles don't have any role in research dissemination, it is not worth publishing it. If you are beginner and working in the good research group, your Professor or your seniors can easily help you to publish your research in good reputed journals and there will be no problem in its acceptance. Or you can also send them to conferences, a good way of communication among scientists.
It's totally wrong to say that as a requirement PhD. candidates can publish their articles in such journals. From such trend, one can easily imagine the talent of our future researchers. One will submit our article in such journals only if we are not confident of our work. There are many good journals without any publishing fee. If you doing good research then you will definitely be confident about publishing it in good journals.
"One will submit our article in such journals only if we are not confident of our work, Dhillon."
NOT fully true, many big name Profs have published in OAJ, though I`m NOT a big fan of those. However, having impact of your work/paper today, better than after 2 years!!! This is one major difference between OAJ and conventional. Not ALL good journals entails good research papers, there are exceptions!
Reply @ Dhillon. It is absolutely wrong that open access publications has no citation and worth nothing towards research dissemination. Let me example you by bioinformatics publications in open access. Open Source Drug Discovery is a major branch where we are having publications day by day. Usually high impact journals keep such classical small scale research at last in queue. Each discovered molecule through such classical in silico approaches have contributed greatly in generating virtual training sets for accurate prediction. From Indian perspective i must add that here you will find many great talents but due to lack of proper guidance (as u said in your comment) they remain unpolished. Here through open access at least they have a showcase which may be great kick start of their research career.
PhD publications in Open Access. It is purely concern of pursuing candidate whether he/she wants to put his/her research openly accessible or a paid one.
Money for Publication: Of course the business of publishing worthless research is wrong but for quality publication resources are required. There is nothing wrong in paid publication untill they really keep a check on quality or also it is the responsibility of citing candidate what he/she is citing is worth to cite or not.
See market is flooded with all kind of literature. Its you na who decide what to read. Today many recognizes a well established writer but before his/her first publication (Might be paid and small ) he/she was in dark only.
As Rashed Al-Sa`ed above said " Not ALL good journals entails good research papers, there are exceptions!" similarly Not ALL Open Access Journal have bad research papers, there are exceptions.
I agree, not all open access journals are bad, some are very well edited and some are very selective. However, in the long run the impact factor of a journal can be as important and many of the open access journals just simply don't have a high enough impact factor to be considered 'world' standard. It's a shame, but that's the reality until they can build a reputation.
Generally, Open Access Journals yield more exposure since they are free as opposed to paper Journals which due to the economic crunch, are so expensive that many Universities have dropped many that they have carried for decades.
The worth of any Open Access Journal (OAJ) lies in its Editorial Board and its Senior Editors. I am a member of several such boards and the quality of the editorial process has, in my opinion, exceeded that of paper journal with impact factors of 3. It has also been my experience that the citations generated from publishing in OAJs is much higher. However, because the major index services do not at first cover OPJs until the their citation record is beyond their threshold level, to recover citations of OAJ publications require some effort through Google (advanced searches), etc. Interestingly, Scopus seems to have a better record for indexing OPJs than Web of Science. But this may change.
My advice? If you have real new and exciting work to report, stick with a proven Journal whether it be OAJ or paper journal.
Lastly. please remember what I was told by an old professor more than 50 years ago: "If it has not been published, it has not been done. If it has not been cited, it has not been done." Citations are the key to the progress of science.
Yes Prof. Leonard Amaral is right. If your work is very much exciting and novel and you have published in a journal not up to that mark (impact factor) but you have enough citations. Thats matters a lot. Sometimes it happens your work has been published in high impact factor prestigious journal but no citation. Thats embarrassing.
But, it is also very true that if some have some interesting and novel results to publish in PLOS/BMC journals, funding is a problem. Funding available for purchasing chemical and instruments for lab, if there is sufficient funding available then one should think about that. I personally think so.
Yes I agree Biswajit, that is one drawback with some reputed journals, you can publish free in these journals however they are not open access and hence are not freely available....and therefore very less no. of citations.
Yes, Prof. Leonard. Its 100% correct that the good Editorial Board can make the Open Access Journal (OAJ) worth publishing. I agree, there are many OAJ with quality peer review system, all thanks to Editorial board.
Kindly look for their indexing in Scopus or Thomas Reuters, Impact factor comes second. For a starter of research, it is worth publishing, as citation index of the research work builts up easily through open access.
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