Miroslaw,

There is a counter-case to what you state in your first sentence. Open access journals often only make enough money for publication costs and to invest in promoting and growing the journal. Also, I would argue that most 'legitimate' open access journals (both new and more established) publish good quality research. In this case, they do not 'contaminate' research. I'm wondering if you might more be associating open access with 'predatory' journals? If that is the case, then all 'neophyte/new' researchers should be discouraged from submitting to them. They will pay money and their research is not viewed or valued by anyone (which counters your point on widespread dissemination). With reputable open access journals - such as Biomed's BMC series (I am an Associate Editor for BMC Public Health), then new researchers should be fully encouraged. These journals are often still competitive though - and often with good Impact Factors - so publication is not guaranteed.

Open access journals actually gives young scientists the opportunity to disseminate research findings. I think we should focus on how to enhance the abilities of these young researchers to write good quality papers.

Why do you associate open access journals with young researchers in particular? I do not see why you feel that young researchers are being offered more of an opportunity to publish in open access journals than their more elderly or more experienced colleagues. As Dean Whitehead suggested, perhaps you were thinking of something other than open access journals...

Open access articles tend to be downloaded much more frequently than papers only available to those with a subscription, so I would suggest that open access is well worth considering whenever there is money available to cover the publication charges.

First, there are many highly ranked open access journals such as BMJ Open, Sage Open, Nursing Open. These journals have robust and actual peer review process the publishing fee is extremely high. A researcher from developing countries may get discount or fee waiver for publishing in these journals. Second, there are journals which aren't open access, but they allow open access publishing if the author or the funder agrees to pay the open access fee. Third, there are predatory open access journals which are bogus journals, with no peer review, compromised research quality, and minimal open access fee, used in order to make money. Please check Jeffery Beall's predatory journal list. Perhaps, you are referring to these open access publishers and journals.

The notion that these journals have wider dissemination and can be good outlets for publishing work is arguable, because these predatory journals are not indexed in research databases and the published papers can hardly be found. Highly ranked journals also encourage and allow early career researchers to publish.

Hello and greetings,

The proliferation of open access (OA) publishing may arguably put the peer review system at edge. There are myths about OA journal especially on the quality issues. OA journals are likely to outperform subscription journal in terms of citations. AO journals funded by APCs may perform better that those funded with other means. Recently, I came across gold OA journals, and I concluded that it might be necessary to publish in OA journals that do not compromise quality standards. You will agree with me that high quality authors are more likely to choose OA in hybrid journals with OA offers.

THE EC TO LAUNCH A NEW A TENDER FOR AN OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING PLATFORM

The European Commission is committed to supporting beneficiaries in complying with open access requirements in Horizon 2020, as well as supporting open access publishing as the main mode of publishing research in the context of open science...

https://danube-inco.net/object/news/19349