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The
Scientific journals have a 355-year history, with the first, Le Journal des Sçavans, appearing in 1665, followed the same year by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Now there are more than 5000 scientific publishing companies with 25,000 journals publishing 1.5 million articles per year, generating revenues of US $25 billion [
Open access publishing brings many advantages for authors, researchers, research funders, publishers, the environment, and the patients (
For researchers, open access dramatically reduces the hassle of obtaining access to the full text, which is vital as openly accessible abstracts do not always fairly represent article contents [
Individual patients and members of the public
Easy to locate and access primary and secondary research results to inform their own health-related decisions or advise friends and family.
Patient groups
Empowers patient and public involvement groups to engage in reshaping health care or clinical service delivery and get involved in formulating research questions (eg, James Lind Alliance) and how researchers address these questions (eg, INVOLVE).
Health professionals
Allows health professionals to rapidly access primary or secondary research to answer clinical questions at the point of care and thus deliver more evidence-based care.
Guideline development groups and other evidence-based policy developers
Reduces the costs and lowers the barriers to producing evidence-based practice guidelines and incorporating evidence into other policies (eg, for health promotion).
Health systems
Lower cost of incorporating evidence-based thinking into the structure and function of a health system.
Researchers carrying out research
Allows more frequent searching from the researchers’ desktop of a broader range of literature, thus enhancing multi-disciplinary research and helping researchers stay up to date.
Researchers writing articles
Gives greater reassurance that their research will be read.
Research funders
Enhances the uptake of results of the research they fund, reassuring patients and the public that their donations or taxes lead to published results with impact.
Journal publishers
Widens the reach of journals to low- and middle-income countries and nonresearchers (eg, health professionals, patients, and the public). Promotes faster accumulation of data about article readership, enabling rapid-cycle learning (a Learning Publishing System) and enhanced impact.
However, perhaps the most important new reader category that open access supports is patients and the public, allowing them to access research results to guide their self-management decisions. In my view, open access to research results is probably the most critical factor that has led to the global growth of patient involvement networks that influence clinical science. These include groups such as the National Health Service England’s Patient and Public Voice group for clinical service delivery and the National Institute for Health Research’s INVOLVE group for clinical research.
However, the open-access model can also lead to several new pitfalls for authors and readers, as well as for publishers (see
One issue here is fraudulent (formerly labeled as “predatory” [
Another characteristic of these journals is their willingness to appoint anyone to their editorial board, sometimes in return for cash. Sorokowski et al submitted a fictitious resume for an unqualified scientist applying for membership of 360 journal editorial boards and were surprised to be accepted by 33% [
Spelling errors on the journal home page (66% fraudulent versus 6% legitimate)
Distorted or unauthorized images (63% versus 5%)
Promoting a bogus impact factor, the Index Copernicus (33% versus 3%)
Unverified editor or editorial board affiliation (73% versus 2%)
Lower article processing fee (median fee US $100 versus US $1865)
Readers
Tendency to ignore closed-access articles, which mainly affects older material pre-2000. This may lead to higher rates of research duplication, or to failure to incorporate tested classical theories into the design of digital interventions [
Authors
Fraudulent or so-called “predatory” journals.
The ability to publish is limited by cost (mean article processing fee in health informatics is €2200 [US $2441] [
Researchers
Pressure from funders to publish in open access publishers rather than those journals in which they know their research might have a more significant impact.
Public and patients
It may be unclear to those lacking critical appraisal skills which journals publish high-quality material and which are fraudulent/“predatory” publishers, thus leading to the spread of pseudo-science or fake news (eg, the global anti-vax movement) [
Publishers
Article processing fees may act as a barrier to authors from low- and middle-income countries or those who are carrying out unfunded research, leading to a Western bias in journal content.
Added complexity of payment processing.
Authors now expect faster response times and better service quality from the journal team as they are paying for the service.
Some scientific society journals may experience insufficient submissions due to authors declining to pay the article processing fee, and thus declining readership [
A stronger emphasis on journal position in article metric, and impact factor league tables may overrule other publishing values.
As a result, authors need to be vigilant and check the rigor of a journal’s refereeing processes and the quality of published articles before they submit, especially if they are responding to one of the numerous emails soliciting articles. They can also check if their intended journal appears on one of the many white lists of journals that are likely to be genuine, such as the Web of Science Journal citation reports, MEDLINE, or the Directory of Open Access Journals. Some professional bodies also publish whitelists of journals relevant to their areas of interest including, for example:
The Association of Vision Science Librarians [
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ list of journals that claim to follow its Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals [
Research funders should only support publication in journals that commit to high-quality science, and the National Library of Medicine and other bibliographic databases should continue to reject indexing requests from those journals they judge to be fraudulent. However, bibliographic databases and research funders should not presume that all small independent publishers are fraudulent, which has been a barrier to the acceptance of high-quality journals such as JMIR in the past. Senior researchers should reject offers of gift editorship or board membership, however attractive, from fraudulent journals, as that will give the journal spurious authenticity. However, this may not be the case if they genuinely believe that their influence will lead to better quality publications.
However, researchers face a dilemma when approached by an unknown open access journal to referee an article. On the one hand, they can add authenticity by adding their name to the list of reviewers. On the other, by rejecting a poor-quality article, they can improve the quality of the science that the journal publishes and help its editorial staff to better distinguish good from bad science in the future. However, since one of the hallmarks of fraudulent journals is that they tend to carry out refereeing internally if at all, this dilemma will probably not often occur.
There are a several important innovations in open access publishing, one of which, Plan S, has significant potential to disrupt scientific publishing fundamentally [
While many academic organizations have broadly welcomed these principles, some key concerns about Plan S have been raised by publishers, both large and small. This is because Plan S may mean that some publishers (eg, smaller independent publishers such as JMIR or specialist societies such as European Federation for Medical Informatics, International Medical Interpreters Association, or the American Medical Informatics Association) will be sidelined, as major research funders will not recognize their unique contributions towards supporting emerging disciplines, such as health informatics. However, larger publishers are also concerned, with Plan S being described as, “ballistic” by one commentator and Elsevier’s stock price falling by 13% in autumn 2018 after Plan S was mooted [
Some advantages and disadvantages of Plan S for various stakeholders.
Stakeholder | Advantages | Disadvantages |
Individual patients and members of the public | Easy to locate and access results to inform their own health-related decisions or advise friends and family. | Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S. |
Patient groups | Empowers PPIa groups to engage in reshaping health care or clinical service delivery and get involved in formulating research questions and in how researchers address these questions. | Will only apply to research funded by members of Coalition S. |
Health professionals | Allows health professionals to rapidly access primary or secondary research to answer clinical questions at the point of care and thus deliver more evidence-based care. | Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S. |
Guideline development groups and other evidence-based policy developers | Reduces the costs and lowers the barriers to producing evidence-based practice guidelines and incorporating evidence into other policies (eg, for health promotion). | Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S. |
Health systems | Lower cost of incorporating evidence-based thinking into the structure and function of the health system. | Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S. |
Researchers carrying out research | Allows more frequent search from the researchers’ desktop of a broader range of literature, thus enhancing multi-disciplinary research and helping researchers stay up to date. | Will only apply to research funded by members of Coalition S, excluding work funded by smaller organizations and unfunded or student research. May even threaten the existence of some academic disciplines, such as health informatics. |
Researchers writing articles | Gives greater reassurance that their research will be read. | Will only apply to researchers funded by members of Coalition S. |
Research funders | Enhances the uptake of results of the research they fund, reassuring patients and the public that their donations or taxes lead to published results with impact. | Will only apply to research funded by members of Coalition S. |
Journal publishers | Widens the readership of some journals to low- and middle-income countries and nonresearchers. Provides a reliable income stream from Coalition S to journals. | Funding from Consortium S will be subject to meeting several requirements, some of which may be challenging. Likely to favor large, established publishers; could add significant barriers to market entry or growth for small or new publishers, ultimately eradicating smaller publishers and society journals. |
aPPI: patient and public involvement.
A second innovation for open access is publishing the details of an algorithm (eg, the R syntax or pseudocode) alongside the article which describes its development and validation [
A final innovation with even wider potential consequences is JMIRx [
There is no doubt that, since JMIR pioneered this new publishing model 20 years ago, open access has led to many benefits for different stakeholders and even opened up new areas of activity, such as patient and public involvement in research and self-management. Of course, open access has led to side effects and unintended consequences, such as the growth of fraudulent journals, but it is now clear that the significance of this challenge has been overstated. More importantly, several recent innovations described above, led by respected brands, such as JMIR, with its impressive record of accomplishment and exciting plans for the future, build on the open-access model and demonstrate its continuing importance and value.
Thinking about how a new open source publisher and editor might ensure that the advantages of open access outweigh its disadvantages for their journal, some suggested principles include: (1) agree with all staff and funders that the core purpose of the journal is help identify, promote, and disseminate high-quality research and its application to improve society and the environment; (2) develop a business model and partnerships that build brand reputation and encourage scientific rigor, originality, and integrity in pursuit of the core purpose, which needs to take higher priority than commercial profit or other short-term considerations; (3) make details of the article review and publishing process, including peer review criteria and scores, open to both authors and readers, and preferably to automated search agents; (4) lower cost barriers to authors where possible, especially to students, early career researchers, and others carrying out unfunded research, using a range of strategies to reduce or eliminate APCs; (5) lower the barriers to readers, especially members of the public, clinicians, and those in low- and middle-income countries, to help them easily locate and access as much of the content as possible; and (6) strive to ensure that all content is well indexed by the major bibliographic services as soon as possible, and that content is retained online long term in third party archives, such as PMC.
Finally, we should encourage all scientific publishers, whether subscription only, open access or hybrid, to develop, test, and share publishing innovations to support the principles outlined above, in the way that JMIR has so clearly demonstrated in its first two decades.
article processing charge
critically appraised topic
Journal of Medical Internet Research
Mobilise Computable Biomedical Knowledge
JCW has been a member of the Editorial Board of JMIR since it was founded.