A recent qualitative study by Spezi et al. (2018), published in Open Access in the closed-access Journal of Documentation, argues that, despite the prevalent policy of checking for manuscript academic soundness or rigour only, Open Access mega-journals employ in their article review practices more stringent […]
The lacking visibility of Open Access journals and repositories from the Global South, such as Asian countries, in international directories, e.g., DOAJ, can be due to the hurdles for the implementation of best practices they encounter, which limits access to knowledge, while indicating that university, […]
Though scientific databases, e.g., the Web of Science, make an extensive use of citation indices, such as the Social Sciences Citation Index, into which Open Access journals are increasingly included, whether these journal and paper indices are effective may be less certain than assumed, as […]
Recent findings suggest that a transition to Open Access publishing is not likely to have a discernible effect on the quality of scholarly articles, since no significant measurable differences have been found between pre-print papers and their final versions as articles published in toll-based journals. […]
As the august American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) founded in 1848 and publishing Science and other scientific journals, has announced on November 21, 2017, its Science Partner Journals initiative for Open Access publications, it has joined the larger trend of academic institutions […]
The successful conversion of RSC Advances published by the Royal Society of Chemistry into Gold Open Access since October 2016 indicates the maturity of the Open Access model, its acceptance by the scientific community and the continued growth of the journal after the transition to […]
As both criticisms of academic journal publication practices and recent empirical results suggest, transparency that Open Access (OA) tends to promote is likely to be associated with journal quality, since latest journal citation reports have shown that a significant share of highest-ranking scientific journals in […]