Open Access
IEEE has just announced that it will be starting a new gold open-access mega-journal to be called IEEE Access. In launching the journal, the publisher has also coined a new term for the journal’s genre: Multidisciplinary Open Access Mega Journal (MOAMJ).
The editor of the journal is Dr. Michael Pecht of the University of Maryland. He’s currently assembling an editorial board and establishing the journal’s publishing policies.
IEEE Access appears to be following the “light review” standard established by PLOS ONE. Their website says:
But, unlike IEEE’s traditional Transactions or Journals, reviewers are asked to assess the technical correctness of a paper and its potential interest to readers, but not its fundamental novelty or potential impact. Readers will evaluate the work through their comments and usage metrics, updated frequently, will be displayed with the abstract of each paper published.
The term “Multidisciplinary Open Access Mega Journal” may be a little imprecise in this case, for the journal says,
To be accepted for publication in IEEE AccessTM, articles must satisfy the following criteria: The article presents the results of original engineering research, development, or design work [...] [emphasis added]
So it is really “multidisciplinary” only in terms of the disciplines represented by IEEE. You cannot, for example, submit a paper on 17th century British poetry and expect it to get published here, despite the use of the term “multidisciplinary.”
Note that this journal is not on my list of predatory journals. I hope that IEEE Access’ editorial standards are higher than in other IEEE publications. I have observed instances of plagiarism in their publications, and I find it annoying that the publisher often does not add sufficient metadata to its PDFs, meaning that after you print out one of their articles, you have no idea what journal or transaction it came from, when it was published, and the like.
Finally, regarding the article processing fee for this new journal, I found this:
Only $1,750.00 !
That is not cheap.
Hat tip: Felipe G. Nievinski
I believe multidisciplinary means multiple disciplines, not everything from soup to nuts An APC of $1,750 I agree is disappointing. Either authors will be willing to pay or not. Time will tell.
I predict soon there will be also POAMJ: “pan-disciplinary open access mega journals”, also known as “anything-reasonable-as-long-as-authors-pay-publishers-and-publishers-don’t-pay-reviewers”. This situation is getting ridiculous. I’m hoping a decent alternative — a grassroots movement? — will emerge out of all these disruptions in academic publishing. Maybe the Scielo model?
I agree, we could do better. There are other alternatives. PeerJ and SCOAP3 along with direct government funding through models like SciLEO all look promising. I think it will all sort itself out eventually.
Here’s a tentative list of MOAMJ’s:
- PLoS ONE ($1350) — “submissions in any discipline that will contribute to the base of scientific knowledge”
- SpringerPlus ($1080) — “all disciplines of Science”
- Nature’s Science Reports ($1350) — “all areas of the natural sciences”
- IEEE Access ($1750) — “all IEEE fields of interest”
- Nature Communications ($5000) — “all areas of the biological, physical and chemical sciences”
- BMJ Open ($1885) — “medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas”
- SAGE Open ($99) — “span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities”
There is clearly a big difference between SAGE Open ($99) and the others ($1080 and up). How does SAGE rate on the other Beall criteria?
This useful reply could be the start of a much-needed online price-comparison service for all journals, published in all ways.
For price X do we get:
Serious reviewers?
Personal feedback from a qualified journal editor?
Good copyediting?
Effective distribution and active promotion of the journal?
A definite/known/knowable target audience?
Print-on-demand or print issue options?
Clear and attractive publication contracts?
Self-archiving rights?
Indexed journals?
Active link referencing?
Reader feedback management?
Contigency plans for possible closure of the journal?
Supplementary data storage?
Suitably-measured/meaningful impact factors?
etc.
If journals become too mega in their scope, there’s a good chance (statistically speaking) that not many people will be giving specific attention to production values in your area of the journal.
Something like this?
Cost Effectiveness for Open Access Journals
http://www.eigenfactor.org/openaccess/
As a reviewer and an author contributing to PLoS One I believe that its peer review process cannot labelled as “light review”. But it is just my opinion based on my experience…
I’m starting to think that community might be a useful demarcation principle, i.e., whether or not a journal is sponsored or organized by an academic or professional member society. The rationale is that, contrary to creating a website, it is not trivial to attract and retain members. This principle separates well bogus or fake journals. It also separates mega journals (open or not), such as PLoS ONE, IEEE Access, Nature Scientific Reports, etc. which, although genuine, don’t serve any single community — their signal-to-noise ratio is low for any individual scientist.
One more: SpringerPlus — “accepts manuscripts from all disciplines of Science”.