Open Access: types, advantages and disadvantages
Category:
For publishers
Date of publications:
08.09.2024
Views:
71
The term Open Access includes many types of publications. Here are the main ones:
- Diamond OA - the full version of the manuscript is open and available, there is no author's fee (APC);
- Gold OA - the final version of the manuscript becomes open immediately after publication by the publisher, APC may or may not be charged at the publisher's discretion;
- Green OA - a version of the manuscript, usually a pre- or post-print but not the final version, provided by the publisher is freely available in a repository such as PubMed Central. If the authors have signed a copyright transfer agreement, the publisher's policy determines which version of the article can be archived in the repository;
- Bronze OA - the manuscript is published open access only on the journal or publisher's website. The author does not pay a publication fee. However, the publisher retains the copyright and may terminate free access to the publication at any time. True open access publications have a special licence (often a Creative Commons licence);
- Hybrid-a model that gives authors the option to publish their manuscript in open access, the APC is generally higher than in full open access journals. In other cases, the manuscript remains in closed, paid access.
- more people can get access to the results of scientific research, including those who are not always able to access the information they need because of expensive subscriptions;
- new ideas can be disseminated quickly, which in turn fuels the development of different fields of science;
- scientific research shows that OA publications without any barriers contribute to more citations;
- businesses also gain wide access to the latest scientific ideas that they can use in their work. Open Access thus contributes to the development of the economy;
- the latest knowledge can be immediately utilised in teaching as an "open educational resource".
- the number of high-quality, fully OA journals varies widely across disciplines. In some disciplines there are very few or insufficient;
- in the transition period, most research institutions have not yet made provision for royalties, which imposes additional, often significant, costs on researchers. However, many universities now provide funding for OA publications;
- researchers may often receive publication offers from Open Access publishers of dubious quality (so-called 'predatory journals'), which distorts the perception of the Open Access publishing model. But improvements to the databases are now actively being made to more clearly show the quality of open access publishers;
- making publication data and full text available in a repository means an additional burden;
- it is often controversial whether the texts of publications in repositories can be published in Open Access, because there are copyright barriers.
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