Educating authors of biomedical publications to the benefits of Open Access journals

Abstract

In spite of the advantages of Open Access Publishing, some reluctance to support the OA concept still persists among scientific authors. This is mainly due to the lack of or low value of impact factor (IF) of OA journals which leads researchers to consider them as no high quality sources. Some OA journals are however quickly gaining IF and thus they are becoming more "appealing". Educating scientific authors regarding the benefits of OA is the core purpose of an ongoing initiative aimed at establishing a pilot group of Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS, Italian National Institute of Health) researchers supporting the OA paradigm: their activity as starters of an innovative publishing policy is targeted to favouring OA principles among ISS research staff. The publishing practice of ISS researchers with respect to OA journals is being investigated with the objective to find the best strategy to educate authors and foster this new model of publication that guarantees free access to research results in favour of the entire scientific community