Open access publishing has come to stay, at least, for the foreseeable future. The benefits seems clear: researchers don't have to depend on per article/ per issue payment or on personal/ institutional subscriptions. This represents a significant paradigm shift.
However, as more and more journals shift to open access practice, publishing articles will require more funds.
In the developing countries, funded research opportunities are few and far between compared to developed and upper-middle income countries. Researchers based in low-income developing countries may find it daunting to get their manuscripts through to publication in journals that operate solely on open access. What impact would this have on researchers from such developing countries? Helpful or hurtful?
Daniel - I think that the irony is that open access was originally formulated to allow 'green access' for developing countries. However, the proliferation of pirate/predatory journals, counter to this well-intentioned movement, has thrown a huge spanner in the works. The principle of open access does not hurt; it is those that wish to exploit and abuse the current situation that hurts.
Thank you so much, Dean. This is one of the reasons why I started this discussion, for the scientific community to take a more critical look at the paradigm change, and the risk of unintended effects associated with it.
Daniel - this paradigm shift is already well discussed on Research Gate. I'm not sure that asking it again will spark off a new debate.
Dear Oshi, I would like to contribute to this discussion as an author from Sri Lanka, which is a developing country. Probably, my views would not be able to generalize to all developing countries.
In Sri Lanka, authors from academic institutions could claim publication/presentation charges from a number of government or semi-government institutions. However, as usual, not all publications or conference presentations could receive these financial assistance. In order to ensure the quality and impact of the publications, the funding institutions usually take in to account the abstracting or indexing databases in which the articles are published and/or the impact factor of the published journal. In case of journal articles, it doesn't matter whether the journal is open access (OA) or not. They do provide publication charges (if exist) if the article is influential. Therefore, in my view, the type of the publication (i.e. OA or not) should not take as a consideration to hurt themselves by the authors, because of the publication fee. They should focus on quality and influential research and produce a quality article for a appropriate and recognized journal. Publication cost can be obtained, whenever you have a good article. I guess, at least these views are applicable to scholars from Sri Lanka.
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