Hello scientific writers! In today’s video we are going to talk about Open Access. What we’ll do is compare the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model to the Open Access publishing site for research paper, paper open model, because there are some factors that you need to be aware of when you are choosing a target site for research paper, paper open to submit your research for publication. Hi, it’s Brian from the Grants and Publications YouTube channel. Thanks for joining us today. Let’s first talk about the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model. In this model the authors of a scientific paper can submit it to the site for research paper, paper open and publish it for free. They don’t have to pay anything. So where does the site for research paper, paper open make its money? In the traditional model the site for research paper, paper open is making its money or its profit from subscription fees. Subscription fees are being paid by individual subscribers, or from university libraries, or company libraries that might subscribe to these site for research paper, paper opens. When you submit your paper to the site for research paper, paper open and you publish it for free in the traditional model, the site for research paper, paper open then owns the copyright to that publication. So that’s an important consideration for some people. Do you want to have control of the copyright or do you want to hand that over to the site for research paper, paper open? Now there are some problems with this traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model. The first one is that not all universities can afford to subscribe to every site for research paper, paper open. Thus, sometimes students, faculty, or staff don’t have ready access to the research articles that they need for their own research. So they don’t have access; in that case somebody’s going to have to pay for access to that site for research paper, paper open article. I’m sure you’ve seen when you click onto an article and it’s behind a paywall. The website says pay this fee and you’ll get access to the article. That’s one way to do it. University libraries also have a network where they can request articles from other libraries, and they have to pay to do that. So either the scientist is going to pay or the scientist’s employer is going to pay to get access to that article that the university library does not have.
I have another video on how to get articles that are behind a paywall, so I’ll link to that up here. A second problem with the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model is for people like me that are not currently affiliated with any university. I can’t go to my university library and ask for access so I have to pay out of my pocket, or I have to find some other way to get that article. Most of the research is being funded through grants from federal institutions like the NIH, the NSF, the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, and these are taxpayer dollars and then the taxpayers can’t see the results of the research that their money is funding. So that’s kind of a problem for society. The third problem of the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model that I would like to bring up I’ve already brought up earlier and that is the issue of copyright. So you sign over your copyright to the site for research paper, paper open, and then that means you can’t freely distribute your article because you don’t own the copyright to it, even though you wrote it. Now you don’t have ownership anymore, so you can’t just give the article to anybody that asks for it and you can’t legally publish it on your web page. Now there are some exceptions to this. Certain traditional publishers will let you distribute your article by PDF after an embargo period. Sometimes that’s a year. Or they might allow you to archive a different version of the article, like a pre-publication version, for example. Sometimes site for research paper, paper opens allow you to use your article in certain ways, but they do own the copyright. Now people recognized these problems with the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model and that’s where the Open Access model originated, to address some of these problems. So what Open Access means is that anyone with an internet connection can download and read and distribute any of the publications in an Open Access site for research paper, paper open.
So it’s free for the readers. You don’t have to pay that access fee, the university library doesn’t have to pay an access fee, it’s free to you as a reader. In terms of copyright, typically the author retains the copyright when they publish with Open Access, because the articles are made available under a Creative Commons license, and so that license allows anyone to freely use that article in any way they want to, as long as they attribute the authors of that article, Also, because the authors retain the copyright, you can archive the article any way you want to. You can put it on your website, you can put it on your university’s website, you can email it to all your friends, anything you want to do with it you’re allowed, because you still have the copyright as the author. And so self archiving of the final version is allowed, as opposed to the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model where self archiving is usually not the final version, it’s usually a pre-publication version. But one of the big drawbacks of Open Access is that the authors have to pay to publish. So in the traditional model it was free for the authors to publish; in the Open Access model the authors have to pay to publish, most of the time; there are some exceptions and we’ll get to that. So the authors pay what is known as an APC, article processing charge, and the article processing charge is anywhere from typically one thousand dollars up to more than ten thousand dollars. On average we’re looking at around twenty eight hundred to three thousand us dollars in 2021 as the average article processing charge to publish Open Access. So it’s pretty expensive. Where does this money come from? Well at certain universities the department or the institution has some funds they set aside to pay for a certain number of Open Access publications. The authors might get the money from a grant that they have been awarded, or they find the money somewhere else.
I suppose there are times when the authors pay out of their pocket. Now a lot of Open Access publishers will give discounts or even free 100% discounts to authors that are in certain developing countries. So, if you’re in one of those countries check with your target site for research paper, paper open and see if you can get a discount or even a 100% discount. All right, so we’ve talked about what Open Access is compared to the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model, but there are different types of Open Access. The first type is the one that I’ve just been talking about: it’s the pay to publish model, also known as Gold Open Access. So with these Gold Open Access site for research paper, paper opens authors have to pay to publish, but there are no subscription fees. You can access it by yourself; you don’t have to go through the university. The Gold Open Access site for research paper, paper opens are fully Open Access. So every article in them is Open Access. Now another type of Open Access site for research paper, paper open is called the hybrid site for research paper, paper open. The hybrid site for research paper, paper opens, Open Access is optional. You can publish in the traditional model where it’s free for you, but it’s not free for the readers, or you can publish an Open Access model where the author pays. and it is free for the readers. Then there’s another type of access called Green Open Access. And Green Open Access doesn’t really depend on the site for research paper, paper open’s business model; whether it’s Gold or a hybrid. What green Open Access means is that the article is put into a repository where anyone can access that article for free. If you want to find out more about these repositories, I have a link in the description, so go and check that. It’s a link to the Open DOAR or the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories, and you can look for the repository in your country. A fourth model of Open Access is called the Diamond model. So Diamond Open Access site for research paper, paper opens are free for the readers, and they’re also free for the authors.
The authors don’t have to pay, the readers don’t have to pay, who has to pay? Somebody has to pay, because there are costs associated with running a website with processing articles and publishing site for research paper, paper open them, and maintaining all of that infrastructure. With Diamond Open Access it’s paid for by donors. So the donors might be institutions, like universities or foundations, or they might be individuals that decide to donate some money for these diamond Open Access site for research paper, paper opens. I have another video on how to choose a target site for research paper, paper open, so I give you a number of considerations that you need to think about as you are deciding where to submit your manuscript and I will link to that up here. So let’s talk about the positives and negatives of Open Access publishing site for research paper, paper open as compared to traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open. One of the positives is they are no cost for readers, and so Open Access site for research paper, paper opens typically have a higher citation rate than non-Open Access site for research paper, paper opens. It’s not a huge difference, but there is a difference. Another positive: because everyone has free access to this article, the people that are ultimately funding the research, the taxpayers of that country, have access to the results that come out of the research. So it’s better for society. The negatives of Open Access: one of them is that it’s expensive. It costs a lot of money for the authors. When I was a professor and I had my own research lab there were times when I didn’t have grant money, but I needed to publish something, so I had to find some funds in my budget: divert them from research supplies into publishing site for research paper, paper open fees. It was a hardship for my lab. If there are scientists that are between grants or they don’t have funding for publication for some reason, it can be a hardship for them, and they might not be able to use Open Access. They might have to go with the traditional publishing site for research paper, paper open model. A negative is kind of the other side of the coin when I mentioned that taxpayers have access to the research that they funded, that’s true, but now they have to pay for the publication fees too.
So it’s actually going to be inflationary. On grant proposals, as Open Access becomes more and more prominent and researchers are writing Open Access fees into their grant proposals, the price is going to keep going up and up. I have another video talking about those issues and I’ll link to that right here. A third negative for publishing site for research paper, paper open Open Access: even if you go the free route in the Diamond Open Access site for research paper, paper opens, they’re not very well known and/or they have a low impact factor. Now maybe that will change and Diamond Open Access will take off and the impact factors will increase. I hope that’s true. So if impact factor is something that’s important to you the Diamond Open Access site for research paper, paper open may not meet that need. Well I hope you got some useful information and value from this video. If so please hit the like button and consider subscribing to the Grants and Publications YouTube channel if you want to hear more videos about scientific writing related topics. All of my sources for this video can be found in the description, so take a look at those. I’ll see you next time and happy writing!.