Introduction
Just like in many other academe-oriented institutions, faculty and staff in UP Diliman are highly encouraged to write academic papers and have them published in a reputable journal. Lately there has been a trend of publishing on ‘open access’ journals.
Open access (OA) allows future potential readers of your journal article to read it for free and bypass the paywall, ensuring a more equitable access and promoting your research to more scholars. This is in contrast with the traditional publishing model where your article is exclusively available in the journal where you submitted it, requiring large subscription fees to access which would make it inaccessible to the general public.
We will discuss how you can take advantage of open access and see for yourself if you can go with the OA route and leave the traditional publishing model behind.
Types of Open Access
There are many types of open access, but for the purposes of this blog post we are only going to discuss three: Green OA, Gold OA, and Diamond OA
Green OA
Also known as self-archiving. In addition to the journal which has the final version of the paper, the researcher may post an accepted manuscript in their own web space (personal blog, college/department website, etc).
The main limitation is that most of the rights will end up with the publisher of the journal. You typically have to wait until the embargo period is over before you can post it on your own, until then the article would be available only to the journal.
Gold OA
With Gold OA, the final version of the paper is immediately available to the public without requiring a subscription fee to access. The author also retains the copyrights.
However, to offset the loss of income from not having subscriptions, the author would likely have to pay an article publishing fee (APC) to the publisher.
Diamond OA
Also known as Platinum OA. The paper is immediately available to the public for free. But unlike Gold OA, they do not charge any fees to the author or reader.
Instead of subscription fees or APC, the funding for the journal usually comes from institutional support or government funding.
How to Publish in Gold OA without Paying the APC
In a perfect world the ideal choice for publishing open access would be either the Green OA or Diamond OA. Neither of these two require payment from the author to get the article published.
But at present, many of the traditional journals are opting to have a ‘hybrid’ approach which allows the author to choose between either traditional publishing and Gold OA. Basically the journals get their profits by either the subscription fees (from the readers) or APC payment (from the author).
So we listed some ways on how you as the author can avoid or perhaps minimize the payment for APC.
Look for Journals without Fees in DOAJ
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) <https://doaj.org> is a website that maintains a community-curated list of open access journals. You can adjust your search on it so that it only lists journals which do not charge any fees to publish. Around 66% of open access journals listed in the DOAJ do not charge fees.
You can use this to further filter the journals until you find one that is suitable for your topic or intended audience. In this demonstration we show you can use these settings to find library science journals that are open access without fees, accept English manuscripts, and are published in Southeast Asia.
- See journals: Without fees
- Subject: Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
- Languages: English
- Publishers’ countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
Visit this search link to see the individual results obtained from the above query.
That said, to expand your choices on where you can publish, you should still look into the open access journals that do charge APC fees. Some of them are fairly affordable (around $50 or less), and there are also those which offer waivers from paying any APC.
For example in the Jurnal Pustaka Ilmiah published by the Universitas Sebelas Maret Library, they offer the following APC arrangement:
- 500,000 IDR for ‘fast track review’ – guarantees review, editorial decision, and author notification within 4 weeks
- 200,000 IDR for regular article publication – APC charged after paper is accepted for publication
- Waiver – if you do not have the funds to pay, as they “do not want fees to prevent the publication of worthy work”
What to Do if You Can’t Avoid Paying the APC
There may be instances where you might be unable to submit your article to the DOAJ-listed journals. This happens for some UP faculty who must publish to attain tenure (a.k.a. the Publish or perish culture). Failure to publish often means that they will end up on instructor rank only, and they may have their employment terminated if they are not able to produce the publishing output expected of them.
We have seen requirements that they must submit their article to certain journals such as those with a presence in Scopus or Web of Science, or those which have a required level of journal impact factor. Unfortunately, many of those journals which both satisfy the above criteria and are also open access tend to charge an exorbitant APC fee to the tune of up to $3,500 per article (over PhP 200,000) or more. This Rappler education piece shares the experience of the research administrator of Ateneo on the massive fees for publishing in open access.
Unfortunately, as far as we know both UP Diliman and UP System do not currently have any grants that may be used to pay for the APC.
- While there are grants such as the International Publication Award which are provided for publishing in Scopus/WoS-indexed journals, this is only given to the author after the article is already published in the journal.
- The University Library likewise does not have any ‘transformative agreement’ with the publishers, wherein the APC can be waived if the faculty chooses to publish with them and we meet a certain quota of articles per year. We did not push through with transformative agreement since upon closer look at the terms we found that it may be more expensive than traditional publishing if the research output from the faculty is lower than expected.
Given the lack of institutional support, it falls back to the author if they still want to pursue open access publishing. Regardless of the perceived benefits of open access, we do not encourage that authors end up in debt or other financial burden to themselves or their family just to pay for the APC.
If the journal lets you choose between the traditional publishing model and open access, but the APC on open access is too expensive to afford, feel free to choose the traditional publishing. On our part in the University Library, we are subscribed to most, if not all, major academic databases which provide full text coverage for research in UP courses. It is part of the mandate of the University Library to provide access to information resources, which includes subscriptions to academic databases.
As long as you publish in a journal which has its full text available in University Library’s academic databases, your research should be accessible to UP constituents as well as external researchers who study in our libraries. Although the availability of some full text might be delayed compared to the printed copy due to the embargo of the digital edition if there is a ‘moving wall’ like some JSTOR journals.
That is all for now, thank you for reading all the way here! Whether you dive headfirst to open access or you opt for traditional publishing, we look forward to assisting you in every step of your research journey.
Lecture on Open Access and Traditional Publishing Model
On 20 May 2024, the University Library in partnership with the College of Home Economics – Office of Research and Publications through the College of Home Economics Library organized a hybrid lecture which was broadcast on Facebook Live – https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1168399317517224.
This lecture is a recommended watch on the topic of open access publishing, it has the following objectives:
- Explain the open access and subscription model in academic publishing;
- State how to choose the right journal before paper submission;
- Outline the roles of editors and reviewers in the process of publishing; and
- Summarize how to publish ethically from the author’s point of view
References
Cornelio, J. (2023, May 30). Opinion – the perils of open access. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/opinion-perils-open-access-academe-university/
Dalhousie University Libraries. (2024, April 9). Author processing charges – Open access. https://dal.ca.libguides.com/open_access/apc
Old Dominion University Libraries. (2024, May 10). Where (and where not) to publish your work. https://guides.lib.odu.edu/publish/apc