Abstract
The open access paradigm has become an important approach in today’s information and communication society. Funders and governments in different countries stipulate open access publications of funded research results. Medical informatics as part of the science, technology and medicine disciplines benefits from many research funds, such as National Institutes of Health in the US, Wellcome Trust in UK, German Research Foundation in Germany and many more. In this study an overview of the current open access programs and conditions of major journals in the field of medical informatics is presented. It was investigated whether there are suitable options and how they are shaped. Therefore all journals in Thomson Reuters Web of Science that were listed in the subject category “Medical Informatics” in 2014 were examined. An Internet research was conducted by investigating the journals’ websites. It was reviewed whether journals offer an open access option with a subsequent check of conditions as for example the type of open access, the fees and the licensing. As a result all journals in the field of medical informatics that had an impact factor in 2014 offer an open access option. A predominantly consistent pricing range was determined with an average fee of 2.248 € and a median fee of 2.207 €. The height of a journals’ open access fee did not correlate with the height of its Impact Factor. Hence, medical informatics journals have recognized the trend of open access publishing, though the vast majority of them are working with the hybrid method. Hybrid open access may however lead to problems in questions of double dipping and the often stipulated gold open access.
Highlights
Existing publication models charge readers for accessing journal or book content of publishers
As especially research projects from science, technology and medicine (STM) disciplines are government-financed or receive funds from other organizations, their researchers are increasingly confronted with open access publishing
Publishers responded to this development with offering various options for publishing journal articles open access
Summary
Existing publication models charge readers for accessing journal or book content of publishers. The open access model is a further logical consequence of this development. The free access to scientific journal articles is a target of many research funders as well as various governments [4,5,6]. The European Union as a whole for example stipulates open access availability of funded research results until 2020 [7]. As especially research projects from science, technology and medicine (STM) disciplines are government-financed or receive funds from other organizations, their researchers are increasingly confronted with open access publishing. Publishers responded to this development with offering various options for publishing journal articles open access. Many new publishing houses were established, specializing in this business model [8, 9]
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