Abstract
Introduction
Historically, academic publishing has relied on print versions of journals that were circulated to libraries or individuals, with a subscription, and for research and teaching purposes individuals often collected copies or reprints. Nowadays, there are numerous ways to access online reading material electronically via personal computers, laptops, tablets, Kindles, mobile phones, iPods and iPads, and to share it through social, professional and academic networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, academia (academia.edu) and ResearchGate (researchGate.net).
Moreover, academics routinely receive emails from online publishers inviting them to submit articles to their journal or become a guest editor or member of their editorial board. These direct marketing approaches have lifted the awareness of open-access journals, but many academics and/or clinicians appear reluctant to submit their work to journals with which they are unfamiliar, or perhaps they do not trust the review process of open-access material as compared to traditional print journals.
Why publish?
Academics publish because they want to and the endeavour provides a means of communicating their findings and ideas. Academics also publish because they need to. Publishing is a key measure of academic success and an essential determinant of career progression. The quality, number and impact of publications are routinely assessed as part of procedures that govern promotion and grant funding. In addition to crude measures such as the number of papers, it is the impact of one’s research that is considered to be the most important factor. The latter is usually gauged by the change that it occasions on practice in that field, but this is inherently difficult to capture (Cleary et al., 2013; Lewison et al., 2007) and so citation and the impact of the journal in which an article is published are often used as a proxy. This is why, for many authors, the journal in which a paper is published is important. Prior to the Internet, each journal had its own reasonably well-defined readership, and if you wanted to target this audience then you submitted your article to that particular journal. This is perhaps less critical nowadays as articles are rarely retrieved by academics perusing individual journals and instead are identified following an electronic search using keywords. At the same time, the importance of a specific article, its impact and likelihood of being cited are still inferred to a considerable extent by the journal’s impact factor and the international standing of the authors.
Therefore, the aim of this Viewpoint is to briefly consider the key issues that concern the publishing of psychiatry research in open-access journals versus journals with traditional models. By ‘open access’ we mean it’s freely available on the public Internet for users to read, download and print at no cost, and for them to use it for any lawful purpose (Albert, 2006). The only constraint on reproduction is to give authors control over the integrity of their work and be properly acknowledged and cited.
Method
A comprehensive list of open-access psychiatry journals was accessed (6–12 November 2012) from Ulhrich’s Periodicals Dictionary (ulrichsweb.serialsolutions.com) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; www.doaj.org) using the term ‘psychiatry’. We excluded journals if their content was not exclusive to psychiatry and non-English journals. Four psychiatry journals were not used in the analysis as they were mainly websites for psychiatric societies and unlikely to attract submissions from other countries (e.g. The Journal of Pakistan Psychiatric Society, Iranian Journal of Psychiatry, Orissa Journal of Psychiatry, and the Sri Lanka Journal of Psychiatry). Of the 65 open-access journals listed on the DOAJ using the above search term, 20 fulfilled the above inclusion criteria and are shown in Table 1. Further details were collected about the first year of publication, publisher, the number of articles for 2011, processing fees and online availability of full text, abstracting and indexing databases. The next part of the analysis obtained citations for each journal listed on Scopus (www.scopus.com) and journal ranking data for 2011 from SCImago (SCImago Journal & Country Rank from www.scimagojr.com) and Journal Citation Reports (JCR, Thomson Reuters). For some of the journals listed on Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus, journal impact was obtained directly from the citations as previously described (Hunt et al., 2011; Watson et al., 2012).
Twenty open-access psychiatry journals (listed in alphabetical order).
Source: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Available at: www.doaj.org/ (accessed 9 November 2012).
JCR: Journal Citation Reports; JIF: journal impact factor from either Scopus or SCImago (those in brackets [ ] were computed manually from citations received). Fee ranges are based on article type or length; N/A: not available or less than 2 years of articles to determine JIF; WoS: Web of Science.
Results
Online publishing is relatively new: the oldest open-access psychiatry journal appeared in 1997 and six new journals have been launched from 2010 (Table 1). Thirteen journals required payment to cover processing fees, which ranged from US$250 (The Internet Journal of Mental Health) to US$3600 (Translational Psychiatry). University or medical societies, usually at no cost, published eight journals. The majority of journals claimed international advisory boards; however, the function of these boards is difficult to determine. There was wide variability in the number of articles published per year, ranging from three to 209. Although most were listed in Google Scholar or PubMed, about half were not indexed in other popular searching databases such as Ovid, MEDLINE or PsycINFO. Fourteen (70%) had some or all of their content indexed in Scopus or WoS, but only two journals (BMC Psychiatry and Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience) are currently indexed in JCR. These two journals had impact factors of 2.55 and 5.34, respectfully. One journal (The European Journal of Psychiatry) listed on WoS, but not in JCR, had a computed impact factor of 0.21. Translational Psychiatry started publishing in 2011 and is currently listed on WoS, but a JIF will not be available until 2013. Three journals indexed by SCImago (but not JCR) had 2-year impact factors above one: Annals of General Psychiatry (JIF = 2.02), Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health (JIF = 1.88) and Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JIF = 1.35). Two other journals indexed in Scopus (but not SCImago) had proxy 2011 JIFs above one: Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health (1.79) and Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (1.53), calculated from the number of citations received in 2011 from articles appearing in 2009 and 2010. The most cited article listed in Scopus or WoS appeared in Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, with 232 citations.
Discussion
Some of the more ‘respected’ open-access psychiatry journals actually had their start as print journals and moved to online open access. The Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, formerly known as Canadian Child Psychiatric Bulletin, first appeared in print in 1992. Likewise, the Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience first appeared in 1976 as the Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa. Both of these journals are supported by medical societies, do not charge processing fees and are good examples of not-for-profit open-access journals. At the other end of the spectrum, some journals are available only online and charge considerable amounts for publication.
Open-access journals appear to have some benefits. First, on the whole they offer relatively rapid publication, although this may be a function of the fact that they have potentially limitless space and also because, at present at least, they are likely to have relatively fewer submissions. This will undoubtedly change and so may the time to eventual publication. Second, the authors of an open-access article own the copyright and can therefore make their article available in any way they choose. For example, ResearchGate routinely asks authors to upload their articles and the final version can be uploaded, provided it is published through open access. However, most traditional journals do not allow this, at least for a considerable period of time (2–3 years). This is clearly a challenge to traditional publishers, who make their profits from the sale of articles to institutions, individuals and industry and can only do so if their ‘product’ has some degree of exclusivity.
A downside of open-access publishing is cost to the author. For some authors this is a real issue. However, most open-access journals waive fees or have discount rates for less developed countries. Another downside is that not all the journals are appropriately indexed, though this is rapidly changing. This is important because unless articles can be ‘seen’ and picked up by recognised search engines (e.g. MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsychInfo and PubMed) and are included in calculations for indices of productivity, such as the h-index (Hirsch, 2005), they are likely to be regarded by academics as having less value. It is therefore necessary for articles to attract citations that count, and in doing so contribute to a journal’s impact factor. These aspects of a journal are not self-evident and can be difficult to deduce from available information.
This is less of an issue with respect to established journals and ones that publish via traditional means. Clearly, there are pros and cons to publishing in an open-access journal and the question for most academics is no longer whether open-access journals are viable, or offer a suitable alternative to traditional journals. Instead, the real question and decision to be made is whether publishing in an open-access journal is better than publishing in a traditional journal that allows payment for open access to non-subscribers. The latter model allows maximum visibility but retains the framework of a traditional journal. In psychiatry, there are many journals with an impressive impact factor (Hunt et al., 2010). In fact, the top three dedicated psychiatry journals (Molecular Psychiatry, The American Journal of Psychiatry and Archives of General Psychiatry, recently renamed JAMA Psychiatry) all have impact factors in excess of 10. It is therefore a very attractive option to publish in traditional journals and at the same time have open access. Arguably, this is more of an advantage to the author when the impact factor of the journal is not so high. In these instances, having an openly available article ensures greater access than through the normal channels that the journal may afford. However, it remains to be seen whether this option gains popularity, given that once a paper is accepted there is little incentive to incur any additional cost. This is certainly the case for colour printing, for which few authors have traditionally opted and hence why this comes at no cost in ANZJP.
In this regard, the rising cost of print coupled with decreased revenues through advertising means that online publishing is increasingly popular. For example, the journal Acta Neuropsychiatrica (previously edited by GSM) has transitioned to online only, having been a print journal for nearly two decades. It has also changed publishers to Cambridge University Press and become affiliated with a society (Wegener, 2013). This is a good example of the flux within journal publishing. Previously, this same journal had been published by Munksgaard, which was then taken over by Blackwell, which in turn was subsumed by Wiley. Change of publisher can either benefit a journal or be detrimental. For instance, in the case of ANZJP, the switch from Informa to SAGE provided a welcome opportunity to revise the journal’s format and style and also review its online processing of articles. The journal now also offers open access at a cost, perhaps reflecting the increasing competition with journals dedicated to open access. However, it also offers authors the opportunity to publish their article in its final accepted form on their institutional website, an option not offered by many other mainstream publishers. We are delighted to announce that the ANZJP, while remaining as inclusive as always, is also ‘open for business’.
Limitations
The fees and indexing to various databases may change over time; some of the journals only started publication recently and may still be negotiating inclusion in some of the sources listed in Table 1.
Conclusion
Whereas a decade ago open access was regarded by some as a fad that was unlikely to take hold, it is now clear with the benefit of hindsight to see that this was a myopic view. Over the next decade open access will no doubt continue to grow and may well become the dominant model for publishing. The key concern has to be the integrity of the publishing process and although the majority of open-access journals have adopted procedures equivalent to those of traditional journals there are some that have highly questionable practices (e.g. using a title that is very similar to a well-known journal or another open-access competitor). As open-access journals climb in terms of impact factor they are likely to gain prestige and become increasingly recognised as reputable journals for publication of research by funding agencies and academic institutions. It is these last two steps that are critical for the open-access model to become an academic success that complements its financial success.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Declaration of interest
Two of the authors are editors of psychiatry journals. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.