The Increasing Number of Open-Access Publishers: A Good Thing?

As a specialist in your field of research, we are pleased to invite you to contribute to our forthcoming Open Access book, XXXXXX.

The book will be published by XXXXXX, Open Access publisher of books and journals in the fields of science, technology and medicine.

XXXXX is a pioneer in the publication of Open Access books, with a collection currently comprising over 400 books written by more than 25,000 renowned authors. The complete collection is available for free full-text download on our reading platform, www.XXXXXXX.com.

This will be a reviewed book that will cover the latest research in the field, and will serve as a free, open access resource for scientists and researchers around the world. The book will be edited by an experienced scientist in the field and written by a team of international experts.

Have you received such an email? If so, congratulations on being a “specialist” or an “expert” in your field. Your qualifications were probably recognized by a search-engine mining the titles of recently published articles.

No doubt that open access has done a lot of good for science: making more of the science that we publish available to everyone for free. There is no free lunch, however. Someone must pay for the publisher to copyedit, layout, and host the published articles online indefinitely. The cost of publishing open-access articles is usually borne by the author, through his or her research grants. (Not all scientific disciplines have abundant research grants to draw upon, so this is one of the limiting factors to wider open access for all sciences.)

And, there is the secret to success. Publishers looking to make money have embraced open access. Use the existing reward structure of science (scientists need a place to publish their work), stroke their egos (publish in an edited open-access book along with other experts), get volunteer peer-reviewers to improve the submissions, and collect the money for publishing the book from the authors.

In the last year, I’ve received spam from no less than 7 new publishers, inviting me to contribute to their open-access journals or books.

• Global Meteorology.
• International Journal of Geosciences.
• Atmospheric and Climate Sciences.
• Natural Science.
• Atmosphere.
• Journal of Atmospheric Dynamics, Journal of Atmospheric Structures, Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry, Journal of Atmospheric Phenomena (all published by Mehta Press).

Thu hubris of Mehta Press to squat on all four of these titles is amazing. What do you think distinguishes Journal of Atmospheric Phenomena from Journal of Atmospheric Structures?

That at least some of these publishers are only in it for the money is confirmed by this report of a totally made-up scientific article being accepted for $800. It is also interesting that Wiley, a commercial publisher, felt obliged to post something about the affair on their blog.

Friends, it may look good, it may stroke your ego, but I would suggest being cautious about publishing your work in these fora. Choose existing journals supported by professional societies that you belong to. Choose existing journals that have good reputations and reach the audience that you want. Contribute to open-access journals and books that are edited by respected members of your discipline and have a clear plan with a known table of contents.

Which all goes to prove something that I’ve argued for some time now: No matter how bad your paper is, you can always get it published somewhere.