
Issues in the field of open access
Drawbacks:
- Sometimes the author can only deposit a final draft, rather than the original article, within an institutional repository because of copyright restrictions. This could result in missing or incorrect material.
- The growing use of repositories has led to concerns however over a lack of clarity on what content has been peer reviewed. There is also no established standard quality control model for respitories.
- The variation in publishers' policies regarding self archiving poses difficulties for researchers wishing to disseminate their findings and for repository administrators who must ensure that they are working within the limitations of copyright law and license agreements.
- Are Open Access journals of the same quality as the traditional peer reviewed model?
- Journals that introduce open access will lose subscriptions, some may go out of business. However, open access is not about reforming publication but about making research available to all.
- There are fears for the economic security of small learned societies who are also publishers if the growing use of repositories undermines the income they derive from journal publication.
- Search facilities may be better through a publisher than Google so when using open access you may need to allow more time for literature searching.
Do you agree with these points? If you would like to find out more you could look at the following web resources: