It's a perplexing question. Open access journals are freely available on the net and are in wider circulation and today net has become an ultimate source of literature searching and when an academician/researcher comes across a journal which is freely available then he is often motivated to cite these journals in his/her research. The basic motivating force being that at least in academics we still fail to cross the conservative approach "big is bountiful" - most of the academic research works have a high proportion of "literature" content available through open access journals.

Now coming onto the other issue regarding the impact of these open access journals - there is this natural rule "you do not get anything for free" - in case of open access journals, this cost is paid by the author, and the reader do not have to pay anything much like the same as you watch the television at home - you watch many entertaining programmes and do not pay anything (except for the cable connection fee just as you pay the internet connection fee). There are useful, there are rubbish, there are not so good and there are too good programmes on the television - but involuntarily we watch all of them - sometimes even while not agreeing or liking the content being aired. But the set top box calculates it as the popularity of the programme.

There is obviously a need to control, monitor and rate the open access journals not on the basis of circulation or hits they get, yet an independent quality assessment is required. If you visit my page, you will find a lot of letters to editors - and most of them are to the editors of open access journals (even pubmed indexed ones) regarding the research design, interpretation and statistical errors in scientific material - when such research containing erroneous information is published in an open access journal, it has a multiplier regressive effect for the scientific community - people set up their subsequent researches on the basis of erroneous information in these journals, they get confused when their results do not match with the results cited in these journals and moreover they get a wrong inference of the magnitude of problem itself.

It is unfortunate that you get a domain name registered for as low as $5 and can start a website within $100, you need not have an office, you can have virtual editors, virtual staff and you can run an open access journal without even having scientific knowledge about the subjects. There are groups such as Hindawi, OJST, et al. which publish articles after charging a hefty fee - more unfortunate is the fact that they are pubmed indexed, hence having an "creditation value" for many incompetent professionals who seek their promotional avenues through these publications. And despite having a "C" grade content might have a high impact too owing to their easy availability.

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This is a very good question. I can only provide a brief response based on my own experience. There has been a large number of open access journals set up in recent years, almost all of which are using the 'pay before you publish' model. Unfortunately, it seems that for many of the publishers that have established these journals, the main motive is to make money rather than to publish quality research. There is now a strong tendency for young researchers, that encounter difficulties in publishing articles in reputable established journals, to submit their papers to these open access journals. In most cases, the review process is very weak, or non-existent, and it is therefore possible to publish almost anything, regardless of the quality of the work or its scientific merit. There are many examples of this kind of thing presented in the following website:

http://scholarlyoa.com/

Of course, there are also some excellent open access journals, but in virtually all cases, these have invested in ensuring that they are properly registered with the Thomson ISI system, and they therefore have impact factors. For sure, in the future, open access publishing will become more and more the norm. At the moment, however, this space seems to be 'polluted' by a large number of low quality or even worthless journals. My advice, therefore, to anyone who thinks that they have good scientific data for publication, is that they should only look to publish in journals with an established reputation and that are registered within the Thomson ISI system. Don't settle for second best - get the results of your hard work published in a form that will be recognized for posterity, and not disregarded as valueless just because it was submitted to a bogus journal. Your work is precious, right?

I too have just worried about the arrival of many journals with out impact factor, of course it takes time to a journal to show its standard and to gain the impact factor. We all should know that impact factor is not a rigid measure, perhaps it solely depend on the quality of papers published, and the frequency of publication and mainly those were cited by others. Lets give hand to the new standard journals to the scientific arena, giving platform to all scientists to publish papers as early as possible. Some of the impact factor journals are taking more time to publish meanwhile some are doing withing two weeks but did not go through proper review process. Its all depends on the authors who selects the journals and publish. one thing always irritating that some of the open access journals are doing just for business and to earn money - is not acceptable and should be chased out. Otherwise it is an income generating business with just a computer. Anyone can use science to any thing, we have to justify what we are going to do

Prof G.Mikunthan

Thanks for adding your views.

I had expected more responses on this important topic, since the open excess journals, as James said, are more buisiness oriented and therefore negligent about quality and at the same time have more circulation. I do not know how the scientific communicy should deal with it. Any views ?

Hi Nitin,

As you say, this is a very important question as it will have a BIG impact on science in the coming years. Perhaps you can tag more topics to the question. As it is, you will only reach the people that are linked to the topics that you indicated. Why not add some of the biggest research disciplines such as Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture (look for topics that are popular) and of course, you could usefully add Forestry, since you are from a Forest Research Institute. Best of luck and keep looking for more comment on this one. James

It's a perplexing question. Open access journals are freely available on the net and are in wider circulation and today net has become an ultimate source of literature searching and when an academician/researcher comes across a journal which is freely available then he is often motivated to cite these journals in his/her research. The basic motivating force being that at least in academics we still fail to cross the conservative approach "big is bountiful" - most of the academic research works have a high proportion of "literature" content available through open access journals.

Now coming onto the other issue regarding the impact of these open access journals - there is this natural rule "you do not get anything for free" - in case of open access journals, this cost is paid by the author, and the reader do not have to pay anything much like the same as you watch the television at home - you watch many entertaining programmes and do not pay anything (except for the cable connection fee just as you pay the internet connection fee). There are useful, there are rubbish, there are not so good and there are too good programmes on the television - but involuntarily we watch all of them - sometimes even while not agreeing or liking the content being aired. But the set top box calculates it as the popularity of the programme.

There is obviously a need to control, monitor and rate the open access journals not on the basis of circulation or hits they get, yet an independent quality assessment is required. If you visit my page, you will find a lot of letters to editors - and most of them are to the editors of open access journals (even pubmed indexed ones) regarding the research design, interpretation and statistical errors in scientific material - when such research containing erroneous information is published in an open access journal, it has a multiplier regressive effect for the scientific community - people set up their subsequent researches on the basis of erroneous information in these journals, they get confused when their results do not match with the results cited in these journals and moreover they get a wrong inference of the magnitude of problem itself.

It is unfortunate that you get a domain name registered for as low as $5 and can start a website within $100, you need not have an office, you can have virtual editors, virtual staff and you can run an open access journal without even having scientific knowledge about the subjects. There are groups such as Hindawi, OJST, et al. which publish articles after charging a hefty fee - more unfortunate is the fact that they are pubmed indexed, hence having an "creditation value" for many incompetent professionals who seek their promotional avenues through these publications. And despite having a "C" grade content might have a high impact too owing to their easy availability.

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Thaks Varun for your comments on this important issue. I think some minimum norms other than the monitry ones should be fixed for opening such journals. It ma save research paper publication from becoming a business than just a knowledge sharing. Thanks

Yes, veru true. There are so many open access journal. Also have many companies and publishers offering their journals. Many have imposed fees in order to get published in it. Have to be wise to choose. However, dilemma faced was high impact journals are hard to penetrate while many researchers were pressured to publish their works or findings. I do agree if our work is good, many will seek to get access to it and cite it, regardless of the journal.

There are two types of open access journals: "gold" open access pushes out manuscripts by making them available in on-line journals, and "green" open access puts the paper in a repository that the interested reader has to find. The first will obviously have more impact and higher page charges.

I am surprised that so far there has been no reference to the recent scandal, described in Science (the journal), over the terrible, scandalous performance of most open access journals in accepting a fake manuscript that was written to have numerous quite obvious methodological and analytical flaws. The peer review process for most on-line journals, at least in science, appears to be sloppy or non-existent and (for the ones with conscience enough to require justification) is justified by the notion that post-publication commentary is as good or better than pre-publication peer review.

With two main exceptions, it appears that open access journals are not to be trusted. The exceptions are a handful of journals sponsored by reliable institutions and publishers (PLoS being the main one, Elsevier, BMC and other), and journals that have an option for authors to purchase open access in order to make their work more widely available. (The journal I edit, Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, does this.) For the rest, I would not trust them to be reliable.

There are a many that are outright scams. We have all been approached to serve on editorial boards of these new, which sometimes have ridiculous titles or titles vaguely similar to established journals and which often solicit manuscripts far outside their stated scope. Some of these journals will put your name on the Editorial Board without your consent and will not take it off even after you demand it. For the most part, these bad journals are easy to spot because the English is incorrect or misspelled, the email addresses are often not corporate, the content mix is illogical, and the editor is someone you never heard of. They often promote packages with publication of conference proceedings, and the offer of pre-accepted abstracts to present papers at conferences, often in unlikely places sponsored by organizations that you never heard of, and will not again.

Unfortunately, these scams often attract a small number of legitimate investigators who pay high fees and let their work be published, which lends credibility to the bad journal. I suspect that this usually occurs when a paper has been rejected several times, has flaws, or is not considered particularly interesting within the field.

The big problem is that open access truly is the way of the future for scientific publication - we are just not there yet. Right now, open access is a frontier and like all new frontiers there are bandits as well as pioneers and a cloud of confusion.

Oh, and regarding the impact factor, it is already on the way out as a way of describing journal influence and faculty performance (where it is being replaced by something called the h score, which is actually simpler). These things just take time.

I beg to differ. Although these journals charge a publishing fee, in my experience the peer review and editing process was very professional, with the added benefit that such a publication is freely accessible, surely this is a good thing? I do agree there are a number of rouge journals out there, I receive frequent "spam" from these. Therefore, it should be up to the author to choose a suitable journal and filter out the rubbish. While the reader should to decide on the quality of the published work and whether they wish to use such information further.

Thank you all . It has really been good discussion on open access and conventional ones. Should we conclude that OAJs are not bad it choosen deligently by confirming that they are from authentic sources. I appreciate good information from Tee Guidotti and Peter Mathew besides others.

To do a lab-based research is expensive and to publish its findings is costly. I wish one day we can all publish our research findings at no cost in a more centralized free access Journal with clear acceptable criteria for everyone. And language should not be a barrier to disseminate our knowledge because currently only English language Journals are ISI indexed and thus given impact factor.

May be Researchgate can initiate this.

I think the bes way to control these scrupulous kind of open access journal is to put the rider of being ISi indexed first. They have to qualify for the impact factor either ISI or any standard counrtywise authorized impact factor like NAAS in India to further qualify for the open access license.

This debate seems to emerge now and then albeit as different questions in the RG platform. This means it is a prickly matter, a slippery slope one that will outlive all of us. I agree with one posting Open Access Journals is the way of the future. One such a journal predated my article and published it twice under different authors(none included me), it was difficult for me to follow the matter. Some of my efforts led me to what I would call 'on-going. going, gone' LIST OF STANDALONE JOURNALS

Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access available on: journalshttp://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/