Challenges and Opportunities for Open Assess Journals in Asia
May 29, 2017
Asian universities increasingly implement open access mandates and repositories, in an effort to increase the
accessibility of research results.
A Blog Article by Pablo Markin.
Over three-quarters of Taiwanese research institutions and
universities have chosen to cease subscribing to Elsevier’s journal
access packages, in their efforts to adopt open access
as the format that sustainably enables local and international scholars
to access publicly-funded scientific output. This is likely to be of
more importance for the Asian scientific community than for its Western
counterpart, as in the long term open access can level the global
playing field in terms of research result accessibility by removing
financial barriers to academic journal access. While this is contrary to
the business models of large journal publishers, such as Elsevier, that
prefer maintaining high profit rates over a broader adoption of open or
hybrid access options. On the one hand, maintaining the quality of
scientific journals, such as via rigorous peer review and editorial
processing, has traditionally entailed the deployment of paywall-based
journal access models. On the other hand, in Asia, such as in Japan,
Taiwan and Singapore, voices that advocate open access publishing are
increasingly heard.
This is especially important from the perspective of journal
accessibility, since in many South and East Asian countries, such as
Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, where the implementation of
open access models can significantly contribute to the accessibility of
latest research to local scholars. As the Asia Open Access Summit that
took place in November 2016 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, indicates,
regional bodies, e.g., the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
leading scientific publishers, e.g., BioMed Central, and open
access-related organizations, e.g., Open Access Scholarly Publishers
Association, are keen to make available and exploit open access
resources. While the adoption of open access has a financial rationale,
as it eliminates journal access fees, it also demands a reorientation
away from a narrow focus on impact factor metrics to a wider range of
estimates gauging the prominence that published articles have in
scientific communities. Especially for Asian countries, both publishing
in and mandating open access can foster scientific collaboration and
findings’ communication.
As large journal publishers, such as Wiley, are increasingly heeding
the calls for a greater presence of open access journals among their
offerings. Not infrequently backed by scientific societies, open access
journals can combine high peer-review standards with collaborative
initiatives, while offering Asian scholars additional venues of research
dissemination. Likewise, the Chinese scientific community increasingly accepts
open access journals and open data repositories, even though open
access-oriented policies remain to be formulated in this country.
Thus, while open access journals can significantly reduce barriers to
scholarly publication accessibility in Asia, comprehensive policy-making
frameworks are yet to develop in this region.
By Pablo Markin
Featured Image Credits: Singapore Management University, Singapore, September 22, 2012 | © Erwin Soo.
Challenges and Opportunities for Open Assess Journals in Asia | Open Science
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