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Open Access

This guide provides an introduction to open access

There have always been publishers that take advantage of uninformed authors or readers by selling them low-quality services or products at inflated prices. However, the Gold open access (OA) model, with its high processing fees, lends itself to a particular type of abuse called predatory publishing.

What Is Predatory Publishing

There is no clear-cut definition of exactly what predatory publishing is. One definition, published in Nature, states that predatory publishers are "entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” In practice, predatory publishers all share some common characteristics:

  • They claim to provide peer review, but peer review is in fact non-existent or cursory.
  • They guarantee or promise publication of manuscripts, sometimes sight-unseen.
  • They are almost always “gold open access” which means that the author pays the publisher to have their manuscript published.
  • They send out mass emails inviting researchers to submit to their journals, often in wildly inappropriate fields.

It is important to note that while most predatory journals are gold OA, most gold OA journals are NOT predatory and some very prestigious journals, like PLOS One are gold OA.

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