A new era of open access?

Prior to the 2007 Australian Federal election, the Howard Government's new funding model for research in the higher education sector, the Research Quality Framework (RQF), was being implemented. The RQF was a 'work in progress' and a means of determining 'quality' and 'impact' in research undertaken by universities, with universities being funding according to a yet-to-be-determined model. When the Rudd Labor Government swept to power in November 2007 the ROF was dismantled and replaced by the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The ERA initiative is being developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC), in conjunction with the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and aims to assess research quality using a combination of metrics and expert review committees. The focus on metrics makes the initiative extremely relevant to academic libraries. In this article we investigate and analyse the recognition, or otherwise, of open access journals in the ARC's recently released draft list of peer-reviewed journals which will form the basis for the metrics used in the ERA.

The open access publishing movement is not new; for more than ten years it has promoted the use of networked communications to provide alternative models for the dissemination of scholarship. Although Harnad (1) coined the phrase 'scholarly skywriting' in the early 1990s, digital repositories and open access journals did not become a serious alternative to traditional publishing processes until the last few years. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (2) lists 3 487 peer-reviewed journals (in July 2008), indicating that the opportunity to publish in open access scholarly journals continues to develop. When considering how academic and research output is recognised, however, it needs to be acknowledged that academic promotion processes may be in conflict with increasing support for open access modes of publication. For instance, as Houghton states,

 
   promotion, tenure and funding allocations in universities and 
   research institutions are often linked to publication in a few, 
   leading, refereed journals. Scholarly communication and widespread 
   dissemination of scholarship, on the one hand; and publishing in a 
   few key refereed journals for the purposes of funding, promotion 
   and tenure, on the other, are different and increasingly divergent, 
   if not conflicting goals. (3) 

Commenting on the 2002 Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers report 'Authors and electronic publishing', Steele (4) indicates that 'fewer than 1% of academics considered direct financial reward to be their primary publishing objective. What attracts authors is the ability to communicate with their peer group (33%) and career advancement (22%)'. Although open access models of publishing may assist in the need to communicate with other academics and the community, the way in which research is evaluated has a major impact on career advancement.

Swan and Brown (5) surveyed a random sample of authors across all disciplines and compared the responses of those who have published in open access journals with those who have not. When looking at the reasons for not submitting to open access journals, it was noted that the perceived low impact and low prestige of open access journals were raised as concerns. Each of these two concerns was identified by 69% of the respondents as a reason for not submitting to open access journals.

While this is only an indicative presentation of aspects of the debate around open access publishing, it draws together the concern for measurement of research recognition and what impact this may have on open access journals. If academic recognition is linked to prestige of journals, then how are open access journals rated within this prestige? This is the focus of this article.

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