Open Access: What Do You Think About It?Today many funding agencies (among them the one that has financially supported most of myown and my group’s research) demand that all results of the corresponding research projectsare published Openly Accessible. Most of them are even providing extra money to supportthis policy. Open Access (OA) has become an important topic in the publishing field over thepast ten years or so, and all of us, especially the younger colleagues, will have to form anopinion on it rather sooner than later. Likewise will the large international publishers have toreact, and most of them have actually launched already OA journals themselves.

Up to now more than 425 signatories have signed the ‘‘Berlin Declaration on Open Access toKnowledge in the Sciences and Humanities’’ (http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/) which was initiated by the German Max Planck Society. The declarationstates as its goals that ‘‘… new possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through theclassical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internethave to be supported.’’ Open access is considered ‘‘… a comprehensive source of human

knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community.’’ Among the signatories of this decla-ration are countless universities worldwide, many (prestigious) research organizations, academies, funding agencies, libraries,associations …

As probably many of the readers know, there are currently two main OA directions, i.e., the so-called ‘‘Gold Road’’ and the‘‘Green Road’’. The ‘‘Gold Road’’ means publishing in special OA journals, the number of which is growing continuously. Atthe moment more than a quarter of all scientific journals are estimated to be OA journals.* In some of them the authors have topay to get their manuscripts published, but many are still publishing at no additional cost to the authors. The ‘‘Green Road’’resembles much more the traditional way we have been used to in the past, i.e., the papers are published in regular journals butthe publishers allow the archiving of pre-prints and/or post-prints of a publication by the authors in some repository. At themoment it is estimated that up to 20% of all scientific articles are accessible thorough such repositories.* And then there is ahybrid model where the author of a paper in a regular scientific journal pays an additional fee so that the article is freelyaccessible online for everybody.

There are many good arguments in favor of OA publishing, among them faster and more efficient availability of researchresults, easier access to the articles (and thus possibly an increased number of citations for the authors), reduction of expensesfor libraries (which are frequently underfunded). In addition, much of the scientific research is publicly funded which meansthat in the usual publishing tradition the average reader has to pay twice, once through his/her tax money and a second time toaccess the article, in which way ever.

On the other hand, there are also still some drawbacks. As long as most of us are assessed according to the impact factors of thejournals where we publish our results, as long as scientists in universities are hired according to such numbers, we all will try tosend our manuscripts to higher impact journals. Many of the new OA journals have currently rather low impact factors; andsome of them are certainly of questionable quality. In addition, being also associate editor of one such OA journal, I have seenthat a considerable number of bad manuscripts have been submitted in an attempt to get them published somehow.

I would add one more personal argument against general OA publishing. Virtually all my research has been basic research, i.e.,no immediate application was to be expected. Several times I tried to contact companies to get them interested and, maybe, toadd some minor amount of funding. Without success! Nevertheless, at the end they all will also need basic data to develop theirproducts. Until now, at least they had to pay for the access to the journal or to an individual article. If everything is publishedOA they will get everything for free. Is this fair?

Although This Journal is certainly not a high-impact journal (and the reasons may be manifold) I still think that its scientificcontent is solid and very valuable, indeed. Phase equilibria constitute a very basic property of materials but their knowledge isessential for various fields of materials science and engineering, both in academic research and in industrial development.

*Falk Reckling: ‘‘Free research needs the free circulation of ideas’’, http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/public_relations/oai/free-research-needs-the-free-circulation-of-ideas.html; and Falk Reckling: ‘‘Open Access—Aktuelle internationale und nationale Entwicklungen’’ (in German), http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/public_relations/oai/pdf/FWF_OA-2013.pdf.

JPEDAV (2013) 34:179–180DOI: 10.1007/s11669-013-0234-11547-7037 �ASM InternationalEditorial

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I would hate that the same company that tells me they are not at all interested in my basic research would obtain all my resultsfor free whenever they need them.

So, what’s your opinion?

Herbert IpserAssociate EditorJournal of Phase Equilibria and DiffusionDepartment of Inorganic Chemistry/Materials ChemistryUniversity of Vienna, Vienna, AustriaE-mail: Herbert.Ipser@univie.ac.at

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