Research Impact Summary: Open access publishing is a current debate in scholarly work because it is designed to give opportunity for all people to read the published research. A recent BBC Radio 4 show dedicated to the topic is available to listen to – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004l7k with the title ‘The great science publishing scandal’. As the title implies, there are some problems with the current way of publishing scholarly articles. Many scholars would say publishing is part of the job, and it is a major way of being evaluated. Researchers are asked to provide the the journal’s impact factor when reporting work metrics. The impact factor is considered to be an important metric and sometimes the benchmark for quality. It is certainly true, that most university evaluation systems are based on the number of publications made and the journal’s quality in which the papers are submitted to, however it is not completely true that higher impact factor means higher quality.
As the assistant editor of the European Journal of Adapted Physical Activity (EUJAPA), we are an open access journal, but unlike other scholarly open access journals from publishing houses that charge for publication, EUJAPA is without APC. EUJAPA attracts a narrow area of science, therefore can run from a small number of volunteers to carry out editing duties. In this editorial, I write about this publishing model and what it is we do to keep costs down. There have been a growth in journals that are open access and without fees and that model of publishing was not covered in the aforementioned radio programme, although requires more debate about the future of scholarly work.
Ng, K., 2019. EUJAPA as an open access journal. EUJAPA, 12(1), pp.1-1. DOI: 10.5507/euj.2019.007
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