Open Access
No. As of 2016, Public Library of Science had published over 200,000 articles. BioMed Central – nowadays part of Springer Nature Publishing Group – publishes more than 290 renowned open access journals.
In addition to the well-known open access publishers, large international publishers and specialist associations are establishing their own open access journals. These include the following publishers: Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Sage, Royal Society Publishing, Taylor & Francis and American Physical Society.
High-quality open access journals are always peer reviewed. Funding from FAU’s open access publishing fund is only awarded for articles in high-quality open access journals.
Information about the selection of reviewers is available, for example, at:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/peerreview
http://publications.copernicus.org/services/public_peer_review.html
No, in fact the opposite is the case – free online access enables plagiarism to be recognised more easily. The way in which plagiarism software works is based on it. For this reason, open access is by far the most effective strategy for combating plagiarism.No, in fact the opposite is the case – free online access enables plagiarism to be recognised more easily. The way in which plagiarism software works is based on it. For this reason, open access is by far the most effective strategy for combating plagiarism.
The impact factors can be found in the Journal Citation Reports® database from Thomson Reuters in the same way as traditional journals. Most open access journals are now evaluated by Thomson Reuters.
Open access journals and publishers often advertise their impact factors on their websites.
The impact factors of the publisher Springer are available here: http://www.springer.com/gp/impact-factor-2015.
The free open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS) assists with each stage of the process of producing open access journals. OJS was developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and published under a GNU General Public License. The software allows you to manage rights, choose layout options and set different roles (reader, author, editor, proof-reader, web designer, reviewer), and has an OAI-PMH interface to distribute article metadata in search engines and (library) catalogues. In addition to the local installation and administration, you can also have your journal hosted for a fee (from USD 850 per journal title and year as of 1 July 2015).
Download information: https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ojs_download/
Documentation: https://pkp.sfu.ca/wiki/index.php?title=OJS_Documentation
Hosting service: https://pkpservices.sfu.ca/content/journal-hosting
The free open source software Open Monograph Press (OMP) assists with each stage of the process of producing open access books and book series. OMP was developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and published under a GNU General Public License. The software’s functions include external reviews, proof-reading, layout/production, and management of catalogues and book series. In addition to the local installation and administration, you can also have the software hosted for a fee (from USD 1500 per year plus additional fees of USD 125–175 for each published book as of 1 July 2015).
Download information: https://pkp.sfu.ca/omp/omp_download/
Documentation: https://pkp.sfu.ca/omp/omp_documentation/
Hosting service: https://pkpservices.sfu.ca/content/press-hosting
The free open source software Open Conference Systems was developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and published under a GNU General Public License. It not only allows you to publish open access conference papers but also allows you to create and manage a web presence for your conference. For example, you can:
- create a conference website
- create and send a call for papers
- manage submissions and participants
- publish conference papers digitally
- set up online discussion forums
In addition to the local installation and administration, you can also have the software hosted for a fee (from USD 850 per year as of 1 July 2015).
Download information: https://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/ocs_download/
Documentation: https://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/ocs_documentation/
Hosting service: https://pkpservices.sfu.ca/content/conference-hosting
Your articles will be available to a wider audience and be disseminated more efficiently. Open access leads to quicker publication and greater visibility, as well as increased numbers of citations. See http://open-access.net/de_en/general_information/pros_and_cons_of_open_access/ for details of even more benefits.
The myth about ‘cheap open access journals’ was dispelled a long time ago. As already mentioned, large academic publishers are also part of the growing open access movement. Furthermore, unlike the previous model, it increases quality as the academic publishers are no longer including low-quality journals with the high-quality ones in the packages sold to libraries.
Videos, tables and ZIP files up to a maximum of 60 MB in size can be published using the open access model in OPEN FAU. The corresponding publication must also be made available in OPEN FAU. For research data which must meet more strict requirements in terms of memory, documentation or compliance with research funding organisations’ requirements, we recommend ZENODO (http://zenodo.org/about).
For all OPEN FAU dissertation publications available in digital-only format there is an indexing & abstracting contract with ProQuest (PQDT). FAU doctoral students are eligible for a royalty from these based on sales and use of their dissertation, provided they contact disspub@proquest.com and set up an account. Royalty rates are currently set at 10% of net income. See here (https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fau/home/index/help#rulesfordiss), Section „ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT)“.
In addition authors can register documents they publish in OPEN FAU for dividends with the registry portal T.O.M from VG WORT https://tom.vgwort.de/portal/index. See here (https://open.fau.de/info/faq/vgwort).
BioMed Central and PLOS archive articles for the long term, beyond the lifetime of specific journals. The University Library also permanently archives all articles which have received funding in OPEN FAU.
There are several possible approaches if you have an idea for a new journal. If the open access journal is to be published by a large special interest publisher you should contact the publisher’s programme planning department. Check in the publisher’s programme or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) beforehand whether the publisher publishes purely open access journals.
At Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) you can also publish series through FAU University Press or publish them digitally via the University’s open access repository OPEN FAU. The staff at FAU University Press and OPEN FAU are happy to help.
If you would like to set up an independent open access journal with researchers at other institutions and publish it yourself, we recommend the open source software Open Journal Systems.