Open Access News

A new term has appeared on the horizon of nursing researchers related to publication, it is open access. What is it? Open access, in principle, means publication in a form that allows anyone to have access to the material, so that people are not constrained by having to use a library or to pay for a subscription to a journal....Why would open access be appealing? There are a number of reasons. Librarians, who are troubled by ever-increasing costs for journal subscriptions, believe this would be a good solution. People in rural areas, both in the US and abroad, who do not have access to a good library, would be able to access research that they currently cannot. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Congress like the idea because it seems reasonable that research that was supported by public funding (e.g., NIH funding), should be accessible to members of the public without their having to pay an additional fee. Open access has the potential to expand the visibility and impact of research by increasing the number of people who can read about it. Why not have open access? Journal publishers make their living from subscription fees....While most peer reviewers are unpaid, there is a complex system supporting editors, editorial boards, and management of the peer review process that is costly....In light of this discussion, and to be open with our authors, I want to share Wiley’s policy related to open access. The entire policy is available [here] at the bottom of the For Authors page. Wiley, publisher of Research in Nursing & Health has agreed to deposit the article, in its final form, in PMC at the time of publication, with the stipulation that it be made available for public access 12 months later. This will be done for any article with an NIH grant mentioned in any part of the manuscript. Authors may request that it not to be posted. With regard to posting manuscripts in an internal website, Wiley’s copyright transfer agreement allows posting unfinished versions of the manuscript on such sites. The final version can be posted to an "electronic reserve room" at their own institution that is for student use. As researchers desiring to publish, it behooves us all to be aware of the policy of any journal we submit our work to with regard to open access. I understand the logic of open access, but I also appreciate the manuscript review process. I have enormous faith in and respect for the reviewers for this journal in assuring that what is published is the best, and, although the charges for some publications are outrageously high, I would not want to see an end to private and societal publication and the peer review process.

Comment. It's one thing for a journal to try to protect its revenue stream, although there's no evidence to date that OA archiving jeopardizes that revenue. But it's quite another to imply that OA is about bypassing peer review when it's about removing access barriers to peer-reviewed literature.