Scholarly Publishing

Library of the Health Sciences

Open Access Databases

What are your publisher's policies?

What is Open Access?

What does "open access" mean?

Most often, "open access" refers to journal articles, textbooks, or class content that anyone can access from anywhere. In other words, it isn't kept behind a paywall, anyone can download it for free.

  • Open access journals are often funded by fees charged to authors. This is because open access journals do not follow the traditional funding model, where subscribers (like universities) pay to access journal articles:

“The largest open access publishers, BioMed Central and PLoS, charge $1,350-2,250 per article in most cases”.1  However, UND is a supporter of BioMed Central, and so UND faculty receive a 15% discount (ask your librarian about this discount).

  • Open access publication is beginning to become an accepted way to fulfill the requirements of promotion and tenure. See this CFL page for information on the "UND OA Statement of Support", proposed and passed by the University Senate Library Committee in May 2018, and passed by Senate Executive on 9/19/18.
  • Open access journals vary in quality (just like traditional journals): some are reputable, some are insufficiently rigorous, and some are deceptive.2. (see checklist below). 

What "open access" doesn't mean:

  • Being open access doesn't mean a resource is copyright-free.

example: A journal can take an article for which it retains the copyright and make it open access if they don't charge people for downloading it.

  • Being open access doesn't mean a resource has a creative commons license, rather than a traditional copyright license (though it is likely).
  • Being open access doesn't mean a resource is of poor quality (see checklist below)

 

references:   

1. Van Noorden, Richard. (March 27 2013). “Open Access: The true cost of science publishing.” Nature. http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676

2. Berger, Monica. (March 22-25 2017).  “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Predatory Publishing but were Afraid to Ask.” ACRL 2017: At the Helm: Leading Transformation. http://bit.ly/2gO47AZ

 -sparcopen.org/open-access/

 

Types of Open Access:

Platinum open access journals, also referred to as diamond or sponsored journals, do not charge authors to publish, and also do not charge readers to read their articles. Instead, these journals are financially supported by an organization, often a university of non-profit.

Hybrid open access journals publish both open access and paywalled articles. Typically, these are journals which in the past used to be entirely paywalled and are owned by for-profit-publishers, who are now capitalizing on the market for open access publishing by allowing authors to pay to lower the paywall which would traditional limit readers' access to their article.

Is your journal open access?

How do you figure out if a journal you're considering is open access? Or what type of open access is it?

Every journal ought to have this information explicitly presented in its "about" or "information for authors" pages, sometimes under "fees" or "licensing".

You can also look up the journal in Open Policy finder here, which is a database of journal policies maintained by a UK non-profit.

Considering whether a journal is deceptive, or worthy of your trust?

Deceptive Journal Red Flag Checklist

Look for these red flags when considering whether a journal is deceptive* or worthy of your trust, and contact your librarian if you have any questions!

***NOTE: Some untrustworthy journals are willfully deceptive, while others are simply of lower quality. Further, many legitimate journals may lack the gloss of more established and well-known journals. It is important to be aware of the resource disparities operating within the journal publishing industry, and the significant infrastructural disadvantages at which less monied journals, particularly those in the Global South, operate. Less than stellar English is not always a meaningful indicator, and journals may lack an ISSN, indexing, or impact factor, and still be reputable and legitimate.

1) A suspicious email soliciting papers is a red flag signaling that a journal's main aim is to make a profit, rather than promote academic research. Look out for:

  • unprofessional language
  • flattery and bogus personalization
  • promises of fast peer review and fast publication

2) Does anything about the journal or publisher seem misleading?

  • journal name suspiciously similar to another prominent and respected journal in the field
  • lack of full contact information in email or on website
  • falsified location- Look up the listed address on Google Maps and see if the publisher is actually located there. Does it look like a reputable location where a publisher might be located?

>below you see that the listed location for the journal "Annals of Physiotherapy Clinics" is very suspicious indeed:

 

3) Does the journal or publisher's website seem unprofessional?

  • typos, advertisements, and dead links or sections that are "under development"
  • lack of an "About" section
  • excessive or aggressive advertisements, no stated ad policy
  • excessive use of stock photos, or suspiciously generic, glossy graphics, as you see below:

4) Is important information about the journal or publisher unclear?

  • author fees are unclear
  • no clear instruction to authors
  • no clear statement explaining peer review process
  • lack of information about the ownership and/or management of a journal
  • lack of statement explaining the journal's business model
  • lack of clear stated policies on handling potential conflicts of interest or research misconduct
  • lack of a clearly stated publication schedule
  • lack of copyright and licensing information

5) Is the editorial board reputable?

  • are the members of the editorial board listed, with full contact information?
  • are the members of the editorial board qualified?
    • Feel free to contact editors and ask about their experience with the journal and publisher.

> below you see an image of a suspicious journal's editorial board and an image of a college webite's faculty directory, which refutes the journal's claim that one of their editors works for that college:

6) Are the articles published in previous issues high quality?

  • look out for a large number of published articles written by a small amount of people
  • evaluate the published articles
    • Contact past authors to ask about their experience with the journal or publisher.

7) Is the journal searchable in major databases, such as PubMed and CINAHL? Contact your librarian for help.

8) Look up the journal's impact metrics. Contact your librarian for help.

Publication Pandemonium!

 

 

It's time to announce the winners!

And review the answers to the quiz here.

It is time to announce the winners of the first annual Publication Pandemonium!, competition, which ran from October 21st to the 27th. More than fifty students, faculty, and staff participated in this first ever school-wide publication-themed quiz competition!  

In first place with the most participants (16 people participated with a passing grade score above 70%), drum roll please, is the Medical Program! Congratulations, folks! For winning the participation prize, the Medical program will be receiving $500 in open access publication funding, courtesy of Dr. Combs, Associate Dean of Research and Associate Chair of Biomedical Sciences, and Dr. Ruit, Senior Associate Dean/ Associate Professor, Education & Faculty Affairs. 

Now for the individual student winners. There were multiple students tying for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place scores, so we have many winners, and one person will be chosen randomly for each of the prizes.   

The following four students tied for first place, each with a score of 92.86:  

  • Audrey Marjamaa, Medical Program  

  • Kora Norland, Occupational Therapy Program 

  • Nathan Fix, Medical Program  

  • Ryan Froom, Medical Program  

Out of those four, the randomly chosen prize-winner is: Kora Norland, Occupational Therapy Program! Kora will be winning $500 in open access publication funding as well as a piece of UND merch. 
 

Eight students tied for 2nd place with a score of 85.71:  

  • McKenzie Burian, Medical Program  

  • Kyle Wegner, Medical Program  

  • Rachel Kuechle, Physical Therapy Program  

  • Annika Price, Medical Program  

  • Cherry Yamane, Indigenous Health Program  

  • Lauren Jorda, Medical Program  

  • Myckynzie Schroeder, Medical Program  

  • Emma Weisner, Medical Program  

 and the 2nd place prize-winner is: McKenzie Burian, Medical Program. MCKenzie will be winning a prize of UND merch. 

And finally, seven students tied for 3rd place with a score of 78.57:  

  • Ashlea Nienow, Physical Therapy Program  

  • Sadie Olson, Physical Therapy Program  

  • Bailey Riehl, Medical Program  

  • Cameryn Ryan, Indigenous Health Program  

  • Lindsey Martens, Medical Program  

  • Dani Douri, Medical Program  

  • Allie Reiffenberger, Occupational Therapy Program  

Our prize-winner in 3rd place is: Bailey Riehl, Medical Program. Bailey will be winning a prize of UND merch. 
And finally, what you’re all waiting for, the answers! To view the complete questions and correct answers for the Publication

Pandemonium quiz competition, navigate to the SMHS Library Resources Open Access Research guide, where there are also lots of Open Access week 2024 resources.  

A very heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated as well as our sponsors, Dr. Combs and Dr. Ruit, and a big round of applause for our winners! Congratulations! 

Good luck!

Participate in the International Open Access Week online events!

View the full calendar of international events here, or explore a few selections:

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License.

Tags: health