Open Access Journals
Libertas Academica is a publisher of open access journals. OA journals are freely available to readers through the world-wide web without copyright or licensing restrictions or fees.
Open access journals and us
What is OA?
OA removes the price and permission barriers from free access to scientific research:
- No subscriptions, licencing or pay-per-view fees;
- No copyright restrictions.
Other OA publishers may apply slightly different terms. The Budapest Open Access Initiative explains this:
There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
The Bethesda and Berlin statements also comment on this point. For a work to be OA the copyright holder must consent to let readers:
copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...
Collectively these three constitute the core definition of OA. However, OA journals are also required to provide immediate full-text access to published work rather than just abstracts or article metadata.
The following concepts which are associated with conventional non-OA publishing are compatible with OA:
- Copyright (in a modified form); and,
- Rigorous and thorough peer review; and,
- Profit; and,
- Preservation; and,
- Indexing; and,
- Career advancement; and,
- Prestige.
The primary difference between OA publishing and non-OA publishing is that the costs associated with publishing the journal are paid by the authors rather than the readers and hence do not act as barriers to access.
OA publishing and copyright
There are two key aspects to how copyright relates to OA publishing.
The copyright holders (the authors) consent to unrestricted reading, downloading, copyrighting, sharing, storing, printing, searching and linking to the full text of the work. LA’s licence prevents misattribution and selective reuse to prevent plagiarism, misrepresentation and questionable scholarship.
Where an author has re-used content not in the public domain in an OA work, the consent of the copyright holder must be given.
Therefore, we can say that OA publishing is not comparable to peer-to-peer file sharing for science, and OA publishing is always voluntary.
In its conventional form OA publishing is also royalty-free. Authors effectively give their work to the world without expectation of payment. We believe that in the future it may be possible to publish text books in a manner resembling OA but with royalty payments made to the authors.
Taxpayer-funded research
A major argument in favour of OA publishing is that publicly-funded research should be freely available. The US National Institutes of Health has a policy to require free online access to peer-reviewed journal articles that arise from its funding.
Of course, there are some exceptions to this:
- Classified military research; and,
- Research resulting in patentable discoveries; and,
- Research that authors publish in royalty-producing forms such as books.
The economic basis for OA publishing
While accessing OA journal content is without costs to readers, OA publishing is not truly free; it takes a different approach to covering the economic costs of production where readers are not charged and barriers to access are not created. In this sense OA publishing can be compared to radio or free-to-air television: those with an interest in disseminating information pay the cost of doing so in exchange for there being no barriers to accessing this information.
Although this means that authors pay a publication processing fee, in practice fees are normally paid by the author’s employer or funder or are waived, rather than being paid out of the author’s personal funds.
This economic basis means that our OA journals are sustainable in the long-term, whereas other OA journals supported by outside bodies rather than by publication processing fees paid by authors are subject to the continued favour of outside bodies to ensure their continued existence.
OA publishing and peer review
OA publishing is compatible with peer review and we insist on rigorous, objective peer review in all our journals. We use the same procedures, standards, and select our reviewers from the same sources as are used in conventional journals. As is the case with the authors, the reviewers donate their labour, but there are considerable costs involved in organising peer review. The costs involved are largely in the time and information technology required to distribute files, monitor progress and enforce deadlines, collating and distributing comments, facilitating communication and organising versions of manuscripts.
Beneficiaries of OA publishing
Authors gain by getting an audience for their work larger than any subscription journal can offer and increases its visibility and impact.
Readers gain barrier-free access to research material without library-imposed restrictions. OA published material is accessible from anywhere that a connection to the Internet is available via high-availability research tools such as Google and Entrez Pubmed, and this material is also freely applied to current and future indexing, mining, summarising, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting and aggregation tools, and other forms of data processing and analysis.
Teachers and their students gain free and equal access to content and negates the need for permissions to reproduce. Sharing material is simplified and free.
Libraries gain by avoiding budget restrictions and having to maintain publisher-imposed access policies. Librarians are able to enhance faculties’ access to research and thereby enhance their university’s research profile.
Universities gain by increasing the visibility of their faculty and reducing their subscription journal budget.
Funding agencies gain because OA publishing enhances the return on their research investment. Results of research are more widely accessible and more useful. Public funding agencies gain by tax-payers having access to publicly-funded research. Under conventional publishing, publishers are effectively given exclusive rights to profit from research paid for by tax payers.
As sources of research funding, governments also enjoy the benefits that funding agencies gain. OA also promotes the free sharing of information, a key characteristic of democratic governance.
All citizens gain by having access to peer-reviewed research which is generally not offered by public libraries. Access to such material provides citizens with a counter-point to questionable statements made in less credible sources. It also gives them access to research funded by their taxes. Under conventional publishing, publishers are effectively given exclusive rights to profit from research paid for by tax payers.
Open access compliance
SHERPA/RoMEO
LA is recognised by SHERPA/RoMEO as a "green" OA publisher in recognition that we permit authors to archive their work prior to and after publication. We are also what is commonly known as a "gold" OA publisher because we impose no embargo on access to papers after publication; papers are freely available to all internet users as soon as they are published.
National funding agencies compliance
The following agencies are indicated as recognising us as complying with their definition of an open access publisher:
- Australian Research Council
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation)
- Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Medical Research Council
- The Wellcome Trust
- National Institutes of Health
Suggest a new journal
We welcome suggestions of new journal topics. We have staff dedicated to journal development who are ready to work with you to develop journals to meet the needs of your colleagues.
My LA
My LA is our interface for authors, readers and reviewers. It allows us to offer personalised services for authors, readers and reviewers, and consequently registration is required before it can be accessed.
For readers:
- Register for new article email notifications, or modify your existing registration
- Register for calls for papers email notifications, or modify your existing registration
For authors:
- Submit manuscripts and monitor the status of submitted manuscripts
- Find answers to pre-submission questions
- Review the article style guide and journal-specific submission guidelines for Cancer Informatics, Bioinformatics and Biology Insights, and Perspectives in Medicinal Chemistry
- Review the copy editing service
- Pay publication processing fees online through the credit card gateway
- Download the Guide to My LA for authors
For reviewers:
- Register to become a peer reviewer
- Accept or decline peer review requests and download manuscripts
- Download the Guide to My LA for Reviewers
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How to contact us
By phone or fax:
Phone: (+64) (9) 476 3930
Fax: (+64) (9) 353 1397
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By post:
Please note that postal deliveries may take up to two weeks to arrive. Where possible we recommend sending an email or fax.
Libertas Academica
PO Box 302-624,
North Harbour 0751
Auckland
New Zealand
By email:
For all editorial matters contact Sandi McIver: editorial @ la-press.com
For all business matters contact Tom Hill: tom.hill @ la-press.com
If you have a general enquiry, or if you don't receive a prompt response using an email address given above, please use the online enquiries form below.