Managing Journal Transitions to Fully Gold Open Access

managing-journal-transitions-to-fully-gold-open-access

Alice Wood, Publisher, Wiley

October 25, 2019

Since 2012 we've successfully transitioned (also known as ‘flipped’) 25 journals to open access, 9 more are in the pipeline for 2020 and we are assessing which journals might be appropriate for the years to come.

Before transitioning a title to a fully Gold open access model, there are several considerations we as a publisher need to take into account, including:

Subject discipline: Will the subject community be receptive to a transition to open access?
Availability of funding: Is there any funding available to cover article publication charges (APCs)?
Geographical distribution of authors: Are the majority of authors from countries with established Gold open access activity or are they covered by Research4Life initiatives?
Journal type: Does the journal publish many article types that are not suited to an open access model?
Sustainability: does a transition to open access support a sustainable future for the journal and our partners?

Transition Trends

With articles now available to everyone, it should be no surprise that we see usage (full text downloads) increase significantly when a journal transitions. Our data shows that, on average, usage more than doubles in the transition year.

Studies* have shown that open access articles also tend to be more highly cited and we’ve seen increases in Impact Factor in all journals that we’ve transitioned across varying subject disciplines.

We sometimes (but not always) see an initial dip in submissions, but these usually recover within a year.

Here are some case studies of how three journals responded to being transitioned to fully Gold open access.

The Wiley-Hindawi Partnership

In partnership with Hindawi, we have also transitioned 15 further journal titles, the majority of which are in the physical sciences. Most of these journals have seen a significant uplift in both submissions and publications since they became open access.

What About Authors from Low Income Countries?

For authors publishing in Wiley open access journals, Wiley offers automatic waivers and discounts to corresponding authors based in developing countries as part of the Research4Life initiative, a full list of these can be found here. In addition to the Research4Life countries listed, some journals may offer additional waiver initiatives for APCs.

Don’t Just Take Our Word for It

“We expect greater access, thereby increasing the reach of the research that we publish. This is particularly important for our authors, many of whom receive waivers for open access as their work will be available globally. Promoting the uptake of research emanating from low income countries will further global intellectual interaction and academic progression for colleagues in these regions.

Author feedback about transition has been positive as many have found it increasingly difficult to secure funding as more and more funders require fully open access publishing.” Victoria Hall Moran, Senior Editor, Maternal & Child Nutrition.

“I can honestly say that for us it was an entirely painless process and the journal is now available to the whole world, so the potential audience is so much bigger” Professor Steve Long, EIC GCB Bioenergy.

“The flip went really smoothly and none of the problems we had feared happened, our submissions increased, and we are now well placed to grow the journal”
Professor Martin Parry, Society for Experimental Biology.

Here’s a list of journals that have already transitioned or are transitioning in 2020:

Wiley:

*Due to transition 2020

Wiley-Hindawi Partnership

Open access citation advantage studies (there are many but here are just a few):

Lewis, C. L. (2018). The Open Access Citation Advantage: Does It Exist and What Does It Mean for Libraries?. Information Technology and Libraries, 37(3), 50-65. https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v37i3.10604

Lucraft, Mithu; Draux, Hélène; Walker, John (2018): Assessing the open access effect in hybrid journals. figshare. Journal contribution.

Sotudeh, H. (2019). Does open access citation advantage depend on paper topics? Journal of Information Science.