Dear Kaleemullah Bhatti ,

When it comes to open access it is very important to distinguish between predatory journals (and publishers behind those journals) and genuine and legit ones.

After a pioneering period nowadays the open access movement is a serious and well-established publication model. Basically, all publishers have journals dedicated to open access publishing with a well-established reputation, like for example:

Springer Nature:

-Nature Communications (impact factor: 12.121)

-Scientific Reports (impact factor: 3.998)

Elsevier:

-Cell reports (impact factor: 8.109)

-iScience (impact factor: 4.447)

Royal Society of Chemistry:

-Chemical Science (impact factor: 9.346), for free!

Furthermore, there are now well-established publishers fully dedicated to open access, like:

PLoS Journals:

-PLoS Medicine (impact factor 10.500)

MDPI:

-International Journal of Molecular Sciences (impact factor: 4.556)

Frontiers:

-Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (impact factor: 5.201)

So, the assumption or even assertion that open access is, by definition, easy and the peer review not done properly is simply not true. As indicated by Manjula Wijewickrema some (like PLoS journals) require scientific rigour but leave the assessment of the extent of scientific novelty to the readers. Stating that paid journals (almost always open access) do not perform their job properly (and suggesting that subscription-based publishing is flawless) is a provocative statement but looking at the above example is lacking the necessary nuance.

Best regards.

PS. Of course when talking about the ‘unfortunate’ subcategory of open access journals (the predatory and hijacked journals and publishers) you are absolutely right. Do realize that there are also open access options that are for free, see for example the following discussions:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Scientific_Journals_with_Open_Access_and_no_APC_free_charges_for_authors

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Any_suggestion_of_Academic_Scientific_Journals_without_Article_Processing_Charges_no_publication_fee

I do not think this is true for all journals. In case of predatory or low quality journals that charge an author fee for publication, yes I do agree with your claim without a second thought. However, there are some OA journals indexed in genuine A&I databases that follow proper peer-review process, but include an author fee too. Thus, I do not believe that there exists a direct relationship between the likelihood of acceptance and paid OA (genuine) journals. However, I've noticed that some genuine OA journals tend to follow slightly different review process when compared with others. For example, they consider only the technical soundness of a research despite the significance of findings. In my view, this could increase the likelihood of acceptance compared to a journal that consider the significance of a research along with all other qualities considered by the first journal. In addition, some of the OA journals (genuine) usually stick to some limitations to speed-up their publication process. For instance, strict and relatively short time lag that allow for reviewing.

Dear Kaleemullah Bhatti ,

When it comes to open access it is very important to distinguish between predatory journals (and publishers behind those journals) and genuine and legit ones.

After a pioneering period nowadays the open access movement is a serious and well-established publication model. Basically, all publishers have journals dedicated to open access publishing with a well-established reputation, like for example:

Springer Nature:

-Nature Communications (impact factor: 12.121)

-Scientific Reports (impact factor: 3.998)

Elsevier:

-Cell reports (impact factor: 8.109)

-iScience (impact factor: 4.447)

Royal Society of Chemistry:

-Chemical Science (impact factor: 9.346), for free!

Furthermore, there are now well-established publishers fully dedicated to open access, like:

PLoS Journals:

-PLoS Medicine (impact factor 10.500)

MDPI:

-International Journal of Molecular Sciences (impact factor: 4.556)

Frontiers:

-Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (impact factor: 5.201)

So, the assumption or even assertion that open access is, by definition, easy and the peer review not done properly is simply not true. As indicated by Manjula Wijewickrema some (like PLoS journals) require scientific rigour but leave the assessment of the extent of scientific novelty to the readers. Stating that paid journals (almost always open access) do not perform their job properly (and suggesting that subscription-based publishing is flawless) is a provocative statement but looking at the above example is lacking the necessary nuance.

Best regards.

PS. Of course when talking about the ‘unfortunate’ subcategory of open access journals (the predatory and hijacked journals and publishers) you are absolutely right. Do realize that there are also open access options that are for free, see for example the following discussions:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Scientific_Journals_with_Open_Access_and_no_APC_free_charges_for_authors

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Any_suggestion_of_Academic_Scientific_Journals_without_Article_Processing_Charges_no_publication_fee

When payment becomes supreme criteria to select a paper rest of norms are compromised. It is more in online publications as no space scarcity is there.