Open Access and Developing-Country Researchers

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.    

As I write this post, Open Access Week (October 22–28) is about to begin. As defined on part of our university-library website: “Open access refers to free and unrestricted availability of scientific or scholarly literature on the Internet.”

Open access to journals can especially aid researchers in developing countries, where institutions and individuals often cannot afford to buy journal subscriptions and single journal articles.

Publishers of open access (OA) journals face a challenge, though. Whereas traditional journals receive income from subscriptions, open access journals do not. Yet even if a journal is online only, it needs some money to run.

OA journals typically receive at least some of the needed money by charging authors fees. Standard publication fees for OA journals can be relatively high, especially compared with what developing-country authors can afford.

Commonly, though, OA journals charge reduced fees to authors in low-income countries—or even let such authors publish without a fee.

For example, last month PLOS (Public Library of Science, which publishes OA journals) announced its Global Participation Initiative. In this initiative, authors from low-income countries can publish in PLOS journals for free, and authors from lower-middle-income countries can pay a reduced fee.

OA journals commonly state such policies on their websites. But what if you wish to publish in an OA journal and its website doesn’t seem to have such information? If you think you might qualify for a reduced fee or free publication, contact the journal.

Until the next post—

Barbara