Open access Publishing

Jennifer I. Papin–Ramcharan and Richard A. Dawe write about Open Access publishing in developing countries:

For a number of researchers worldwide, publishing articles in OA journals is increasingly seen as an alternative to publishing in the traditional journals. In traditional journals, the costs associated with publication and peer review are paid for by the readers of those journals either through personal or institutional subscriptions. This traditional mode of funding the dissemination of research results has often been referred to as the “subscriber pays” model. But access to articles in these journals is restricted to those who can afford the costs of subscriptions, or the costs of acquiring copies of the articles by other means such as using interlibrary loan or document delivery facilities.

Alternatively, an OA journal allows all those who have Internet access to freely read, download, copy, distribute, and print articles and other materials. Of course, “free” availability on the Internet is only possible if “someone” pays for the cost of production and dissemination. OA publishers sometimes meet these costs by charging the authors (“author pays” a charge commonly referred to as a page charge). In other cases, open access journals are operated by researchers and/or volunteers and the publishing costs are absorbed by their employers/institutions and/or sponsors.