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Open access publishing in medicine and health: deciding where to publish

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by: Keith Nockels
Academic Librarian
Many research funders require you to publish the work they fund as an open access article (check SHERPA/JULIET to see if your funder does). Open access articles are freely available to all readers, with no need for a subscription or payment. This makes your work more widely available, and may increase its citation count.
In the traditional publishing model, the reader pays a subscription, or a fee to download an individual article. In the open access model, the reader pays nothing. To discuss how open access affects you as an author, and whether you will need to pay a fee, contact us for advice.


Created by Adrienne Yancey for opensource.com https://flic.kr/p/9LBN2U

 There are many reputable open access publishers, and many reputable “traditional” publishers offer an open access option. 
But publishing has a bad side too. There are publishers who charge a fee, promise great things, and deliver little. Some of them solicit articles by emailing people directly.    
I sometimes get emails, inviting me to write an article. Alarm bells ring if I am addressed wrongly (Dear Dr Nockels,) or not at all (Dear, ). Some of the emails are badly written or edited, and they often approach me for work in fields I am supposed to be an expert in but about which I know nothing. Some are from journals that cover a strange mix of subjects, like (fictional, probably) the “International Journal of Nutrition and Lunar Studies”. I suspect that if any reputable journal wanted me to write an invited article, it would approach me in a rather more personal way. Not that this has ever happened, yet, anyway…
These emails are, I strongly suspect, from “predatory” publishers. They may tell you their journal is widely indexed, when it is not, or that it is indexed in something that actually indexes everything. Sometimes the editorial boards include people who are named without their knowledge. Sometimes these journals ask you, the author, to suggest reviewers for your article, and do little to check the identity of that reviewer.
A BMJ Minerva column refers to a study reported in Nature, in which a Dr Anna O. Szust applied to a large number of “predatory” journals asking to be an editor. 48 out of the 360 accepted her and 4 of those made her editor in chief. Polish speakers among you (sadly I am not one) will spot that oszust means “fraud”.  
Some existing journals have been “hijacked” by predatory publishers and some predatory journals have titles so similar to the title of an existing, reputable journal, that you can be easily fooled.
If you have had such an email, or are worried about a journal that you are thinking of submitting to, here are some actions you can take.
·         Ask colleagues who have experience of being published and knowledge of which journals are the core ones.   
·         Use Think Check Submit checklist, when deciding where to submit.
·         Ask the Library – we can identify core journals, check the journal’s claims about where it is indexed and would be happy to investigate a journal you are thinking of submitting to.
·         This (open access) article by Hansoti, Langdorf and Murphy, in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine includes criteria to help you distinguish legitimate from predatory open access journals.
·         The Minerva article mentioned above refers to an (open access) study in BMC Medicine, on how to tell the difference between a predatory and a legitimate biomedical journal.
·         The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors have published a news item about “Fake”, “Predatory” and “Pseudo” journals. It includes a definition of these types of journal, and reasons why they pose a threat and should be avoided.
·         The World Association of Medical Editors’ have guidance.
·         Use the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to check the journal
This is based on articles I wrote for the University Hospitals of Leicester Writing Club Blog, by kind permission of Pip Divall, Clinical Librarian Service Manager.  If you work at University Hospitals of Leicester, do consider attending a Writing Club meeting.  Meetings are workshops, led by librarians or health practitioners, looking at a specific topic of interest and relevance to
people writing for publication.
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