Does having published something open access help or hurt your chances?
Dear Victoria
In the US, UK and Australia, promotion/tenure depends on largely on publications. Academics are required to have at least one article published in one of the highest quality journals in their field over a three year period. This is true for the UK as defined by the REF (Research excellence framework). These high quality journals are all closed-access journals. Even though these closed-access journals also offer open-access option to academics, it comes at high fees to make the articles publicly available - a fee up to £2,000 or $2,500. No academic will pay this amount of money using their personal finance, so this explains why most academics publish in closed-access journals.
There is a general negative bias against open-access journals for the following reasons (i) Open-access journals, in recent times, have been associated with predatory publishers - publishers who charge authors high publishing fees but provide little or no quality review feedback to improve submitted manuscripts (ii) OA journals are considered to be new journals and therefore have no reputation in their field and have very little quality compared to old closed-access journals that have been existing for the past 20 years, (iii) although some new OA journals have high H-index metric on google scholar, tenure committees know that OA journals deliberately manipulate their H-index because they want to become reputable very quickly. These are just few of the issues why tenure boards can turn down publications in OA journals. In a nutshell, these are some of the reasons why most reputable journals that tenure committees recognise are mostly closed-access journals.
I think the issue here should be a question of when is it more appropriate to publish in a closed-access journal or open access journal?
Usually, you should publish in a closed-access (high-quality) journals when: (i) you want to satisfy the requirements of the tenure committee or the REF, (ii) when you want to be recognized as an expert in the field, (iii) when you want to improve your chances of receiving research grants and funds (although some research grants can provide funds to support open-access publishing in a closed-access journal)
On the other hand, you should publish in open-access journals when (i) you want to reach readers in developing countries that cannot access the article because they cannot pay the closed-access article fees, (ii) when you want to publish opinionated articles that would normally not survive the tough review process of closed-access journals (iii) when you want to publish 12 papers all at once in one year, which is obviously impossible to do in closed-access journals because their review period takes about 3-6months at a minimum, while it is much short for OA journals particularly the new OA journals that do a ridiculous 7-days article review time.
If your tenure committee are aware of the problems associated with OA journals, then publishing in OA journals will hurt you - and hurt you very bad. Universities like Manchester, Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, Essex, etc will not promote academics that do not have a published article in a 3-star or 4-star journal.
Professors who publish in OA journals will not get hurt because they are already at the peak of your careers. They publish in new OA journals to help OA journals improve their ranking/reputation. On the other hand, junior academics who publish in OA journals can get hurt if they do so in the UK and US.
I am also aware that university tenure committees in many developing countries do not really care much about research quality, and will consider articles published in any international journal many open access, and that's okay. So the choice of OA or closed-access might also depend on the region/country where you are located.
Finally, please bear in mind that promotion does not only depend on publications. Publications are just one part of the entire promotion criteria.
Hope this helps!
Peterson
Dear Victoria
In the US, UK and Australia, promotion/tenure depends on largely on publications. Academics are required to have at least one article published in one of the highest quality journals in their field over a three year period. This is true for the UK as defined by the REF (Research excellence framework). These high quality journals are all closed-access journals. Even though these closed-access journals also offer open-access option to academics, it comes at high fees to make the articles publicly available - a fee up to £2,000 or $2,500. No academic will pay this amount of money using their personal finance, so this explains why most academics publish in closed-access journals.
There is a general negative bias against open-access journals for the following reasons (i) Open-access journals, in recent times, have been associated with predatory publishers - publishers who charge authors high publishing fees but provide little or no quality review feedback to improve submitted manuscripts (ii) OA journals are considered to be new journals and therefore have no reputation in their field and have very little quality compared to old closed-access journals that have been existing for the past 20 years, (iii) although some new OA journals have high H-index metric on google scholar, tenure committees know that OA journals deliberately manipulate their H-index because they want to become reputable very quickly. These are just few of the issues why tenure boards can turn down publications in OA journals. In a nutshell, these are some of the reasons why most reputable journals that tenure committees recognise are mostly closed-access journals.
I think the issue here should be a question of when is it more appropriate to publish in a closed-access journal or open access journal?
Usually, you should publish in a closed-access (high-quality) journals when: (i) you want to satisfy the requirements of the tenure committee or the REF, (ii) when you want to be recognized as an expert in the field, (iii) when you want to improve your chances of receiving research grants and funds (although some research grants can provide funds to support open-access publishing in a closed-access journal)
On the other hand, you should publish in open-access journals when (i) you want to reach readers in developing countries that cannot access the article because they cannot pay the closed-access article fees, (ii) when you want to publish opinionated articles that would normally not survive the tough review process of closed-access journals (iii) when you want to publish 12 papers all at once in one year, which is obviously impossible to do in closed-access journals because their review period takes about 3-6months at a minimum, while it is much short for OA journals particularly the new OA journals that do a ridiculous 7-days article review time.
If your tenure committee are aware of the problems associated with OA journals, then publishing in OA journals will hurt you - and hurt you very bad. Universities like Manchester, Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, Essex, etc will not promote academics that do not have a published article in a 3-star or 4-star journal.
Professors who publish in OA journals will not get hurt because they are already at the peak of your careers. They publish in new OA journals to help OA journals improve their ranking/reputation. On the other hand, junior academics who publish in OA journals can get hurt if they do so in the UK and US.
I am also aware that university tenure committees in many developing countries do not really care much about research quality, and will consider articles published in any international journal many open access, and that's okay. So the choice of OA or closed-access might also depend on the region/country where you are located.
Finally, please bear in mind that promotion does not only depend on publications. Publications are just one part of the entire promotion criteria.
Hope this helps!
Peterson
There is variability among open-access journals. As Peterson says, some are the predatory-type journals and may be viewed more negatively by these committees than using arVix (or similar cites in your area). Recently many OA journals have been started by learned societies (e.g., the Amer Stat Assoc), and these would be looked upon favorably, though not like Nature and Science (or whichever the top tier journals are in your field).
Victoria - very good responses from both Peterson and Daniel. Peterson - that is a very comprehensive response. Yes - there are many factors that make it a difficult question to answer outright. In my my field - the likes of Biomed Central (BMC) and BMJ open are establishing themselves as an 'alternative' to established journals but, at the same time, they already enjoy a good reputation, reasonable IF factors etc. The other factor to consider - is that many 'traditional' journals are now offering an open access option as well.
I second Daniel's response. Not all open-access journals are created equal (not to mention the difference between fully open-access journals and articles published in 'regular' journals but which you've made open access through a fee or putting in a repository). Your overall publication pattern also matters, so publishing a few papers in fully open-access journals can be different from publishing a lot. For instance, in my field Frontiers has a good reputation, but publishing exclusively in Frontiers may still be frowned upon (although this would also be the case for publishing exclusively in a single traditional journal as well).
This depends on the country you live. In few countries, your article is weighed against the amount you earn out of it; that means having published your article in open access journals hurt your chances in promotion. BUT in other countries where access of your article to maximum number of people works to improve your popularity; that means having published your article in open access books helps in promotion.
We must keep few other things in mind viz. cost of study and writing the article, use of article matter by only specific group of people related with the subject ( specially in medical field , these two things does matter)
BUT , IN MY VIEW, and as my country's culture says, Knowledge sholuld be made available for all people, Keeping in the mind, the cost of the study, Article shouls be made available open access by all journals after recovering cost of the study/ research done for the article.
there is a great difference between diciplines and regions. Withi Europe there is a tendency to open access. Funding institutions demand that the articles and books that came out of funded projects have to be published open access. In order to get funded it is almost necessary to publish OA. But of course not every OA journal counts - the same with published ones. Peer Review, listings etc. are crucial. The prestige of the journal is more important that if its open or closed access.
In general, it is neutral in my country it can be observed a great tendency to publish in open journals without Article Processing Charge. Most important is journal prestige, visibility and impact. In my university our library is leading the open access culture. It is recognize as authority supporting research through library services. We don´t miss an opportunity alerting about predatory journals, recomending where to publish and talking about the importance of open access.
Although rare, there are journals that have relatively high impact, are open access, and have no subscription. In my area the Journal of Statistical Software is an example. This of course requires institutional financial support.
https://www.jstatsoft.org/index
The answer to this question seems relative as all the points raised here are correct depending on the institution in question.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Education
- Higher Education