Preprint as the Material for an Overlay Journal

Abstract

The Open access movement has a long history. In 2002 the Budapest Open access initiative was first announced. However, the problem of Open access has not yet been fully and definitively resolved. In 2018 The European Union has adopted Plan S, which calls for making Open access a reality by 2020. Plan S emphasizes the importance of self-archiving of articles and the role of Preprint’s archives (servers) for scientific results placement. It is noted that Preprint archives have a great potential for editorial and publishing innovations. Scientific journals with limited reader access that operate on a commercial basis do not give up their positions. But even here we see some progress. Journals have become less rigid in their policy towards preprints and post-prints. More and more foreign scientists are becoming adherents of the "Fair open access" movement, which offers a new organizational solution. The journal must have a scientific organization or non-profit Foundation as a founder, that hires a group of executors to provide editorial and publishing services. Editors and publishers should not have their own commercial interests. The scientific journal should be funded from the general contribution of organizations. The article considers a modern type of online scientific journal — the overlay journal. The cost of an issue of the overlay journal is so low that the journal can easily implements the "free for the author, free for the reader" scheme. The overlay journal is based on the public servers of preprints. The online overlay journal reviews the article received from the archive. If the article is accepted for publication, the article metadata is published on the journal website, and the full text of corrected article is re-archived. This way of working does not overload the archive functionality, but it allows to reduce the financial burden on the overlay journal.