We look forward to hear about your personal experience of open access as a researcher. Or your observations.
One obvious benefit is that your research is accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Can you say whether/how this has benefited your work? For example, has it resulted in your research being read by more people? Has this in turn led to more contacts and more opportunities? Do you think it has made a difference to the number of times that your research has been cited by others?
If you have published research in subscription-based journals and open-access journals, what were the differences in your experience?
On HIFA we have previously discussed how some senior academics have a bias against open access journals in terms of quality. This has pushed some researchers towards subscription journals. Is this still a problem or is it resolved?
The biggest disincentive for researchers is the APC or author processing charge. In some journals this can be several thousand dollars. What works and what doesn't work in paying these APCs? How can they be made more affordable?
Over the past several years, many HIFA members have supported the principle that, in manyor most cases, research funders would pay the costs of APCs. The cost would usually be a (relatively minor) budget line on the research funding proposal.
However, some research funders don't agree. Earlier this year, for example, the Gates Foundation announced a new open access policy whereby they have stopped paying APCs. Instead, they direct researchers to post their research as preprints. The subsequent journey of the paper, including editing and peer review (which would normally be done by a journal publisher through APCs), appears now to be unsupported. The Gates Foundation maintains that they do not want to support a dysfunctional system (with, as they see it, exorbitant APCs). But it's not clear yet whether the preprint approach will meet information needs any better (or worse) than the conventional journal approach.
What do you think? hifa@hifaforums.org
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org