Open Access Reflection
I think it is widely agreed that journals should be open access. There are many reasons for both benefits to the author(s) and reader(s). Quick aside… I am always shocked by the cost to publish in open access journals. Just the other day, I read a tweet by @mightdropout saying, “you think Chrissy Teigen accidentally paying $13,000 for a bottle of wine is bad? I once paid almost exactly that amount to publish an open-access article in Nature.”
Open access articles allow an article to be read by a wider audience. However, that increased audience may not know how to properly cite or credit the author(s) for their work. In Dr. Sue Ishaq’s Sequencing Analysis class, we recently read an article about plagiarism. According to Mohan et al., 2014, “Availability of internet facilities and free online journals are the main sources of today’s plagiarism among the students, faculty, and researchers of any profession” (p. 193). I think this was an interesting statement. How can we decrease plagiarism while promoting open access? I’m not saying open access is causing plagiarism. It just seems that because of the increased availability, not all of the readers may know how to credit an author for his or her ideas appropriately.