Abstract
During the 8th Annual Academic Surgical Congress held in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 5-7, 2013, the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS) Presidential Session was dedicated to the topic of publishing. A survey consisting of 37 questions on issues related to publishing was administered to the AAS membership 1 mo before the meeting. The results of the survey were then presented during the 2013 AAS Presidential Session. In addition, a panel of five editors from surgery journals relevant to the membership of the AAS was convened to discuss topics addressed in the results of the survey. These topics included: (1) how to publish in high-impact factor journals; (2) top five reasons why manuscripts get rejected; (3) the do's and don'ts of publishing (i.e., ethics of publishing); (4) how to get on an editorial board; and (5) the future of publishing. This review summarizes the contents of this AAS Presidential Session and provides information relevant for any academician, investigator, or scientist.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 7-15 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Surgical Research |
| Volume | 186 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2014 |
Funding
To most of us, open access consists of the at least weekly email invitation we all receive to contribute to or even join the editorial board of a number of open access journals. Open access journals are available to the reader without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than the ability to gain Internet access. Open access has been a growing distribution model for journals in the past decade, primarily as a result of several key funders mandating that the research published under their funding be available to all readers. Therefore, some forms of open access preclude the ability to sell subscriptions. The cost of publishing the content for nonsubscription, open access content then falls to the author, funder, or institution. Many funding agencies such as The Wellcome Trust, the Research Councils—United Kingdom, and numerous national governmental funding agencies mandate open access and provide support for the cost of open access publication, which can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Currently, there are two forms of open access publication: green and gold. Green open access is when the author publishes in any journal and then archives a version of the article for free public use, usually 6–12 mo after final publication of the article, in an institutional repository or a central repository such as PubMed Central, or some other open access website. Generally, the funder who mandates the green open access, such as the National Institutes of Health, determines the embargo timeframe between when the content is published and when it will be freely available on the funder's repository. Gold open access publication provides immediate open access to the articles on a publisher's website or any other repository. Examples of gold open access journals include the BioMed Central portfolio and The Public Library of Science (PLoS One). The increase in funder mandates requiring open access and the growing interest by authors for their content to be freely available to all global readers has resulted in an explosion in the number of articles published by major open access journals, numbering into the tens of thousands of articles in some notable journals. Consequently, there has been a marked increase in new and the still unproven concept of purely open access journals. The open access explosion, the requirement of open access by a growing number of funders, and the introduction of new open access journals have forced conventional “print” journals to develop selected models of open access to ensure compatibility for all authors. Many journals are now offering open access as an author option to comply with funder mandates, while at the same time, authors can continue to publish under the traditional, nonopen access route. This blend is a more commonly accepted “hybrid model.” For many journals, the author option is kept blind to reviewers and editors to ensure the peer-review process is unbiased. It would be expected that as more mainstream journals move into such hybrid models, some open access journals, many of questionable quality and standards and often driven by “profit” opportunities, will diminish. Open access technology may also allow journals to potentially expand their current product or develop “companion” or “spin off” journals due to expanded markets of both readers and authors, lack of limitation on the number of pages, and potential decreased cost. Currently, the traditional journals are facing stiff competition from the early leaders in the open access industry (PLoS One, the BMC portfolio) and it is possible that funding agencies, such as The Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health, may begin their own open access publication vehicle. Overall, advantages to open access are the ready availability to all users regardless of affiliation with a subscribing library. It allows the general public access to medical data, which in the past was restricted to only medical professionals through personal or institutional subscriptions. It allows taxpayers to see the results of the research that they fund and patients and caregivers, the ability to keep abreast of medical research. The authors and journals benefit by increased visibility and, possibly, increased citations. For many gold open access journals, for which subscriptions are no longer a source of revenue, the open access article processing fee has become a sustainable business model. For the developing world, free open access has been a huge boon to their education and research. A challenge to open access is its financial model, and its many implications. First, there is the transition from the standard journal format available via paid subscription to open access, which is free to the consumer. The loss in the ability to “sell” content via subscriptions to individuals or institutions has to be replaced by a new source of funding, which in most cases is direct transmission of the publication costs to the author who has chosen or is required to publish in an open access method. In sum, the open access model transitions the costs from the publisher and library to the investigator. This has ramifications for conducting research, as investigator grant research dollars will be shifted toward paying to publish the work instead of actually conducting the research. In addition, institutional libraries, which typically are funded from grant overhead dollars, may not be needed in the future. When comparing the overall costs of institutional licenses for traditional publishing versus the anticipated costs to investigators for open access publishing, it is predicted that the costs of open access will far exceed traditional publishing, creating an environment that clearly favors the publishing industry and university administrators at the expense of the researchers. Another concern with the current open access publishing model has to do with the peer-review process. Although the open access journals are peer-reviewed, they typically have very high acceptance rates. PLoS One currently has an acceptance rate of 60%–70%. These high acceptance rates raise questions about the quality of the research being published. Thus, taking into account the financial ramifications and the concern that the open access model may compromise quality, a complete transition to this model should be approached with caution. In summary, e-publication is a valuable tool benefiting authors, libraries, and publishers and will continue to grow, contributing to the decline of print journals, and perhaps in the future to the extinction of article journals. Open access publishing is likely to grow as decreasing library budgets require institutions to explore cheaper alternatives to the rising prices of subscriptions, and authors and funding agencies demand widespread and immediate availability of their work. This arena will create a challenge for both the publishing industry and research community. Publishers, based on the current profitability and the opportunity for new revenue models, are sure to adapt. It is unclear how the open access model will affect the research community. Open access will become a more common venue for publishing scientific research and could harm the research process by shifting publication costs to the researchers. 7
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Surgery