Journals: Simplified

In this day and age, the Internet has been the dominant platform to seek information and to stay connected. This has also reflected in the proliferation of online academic and research-based journals.

Speaking of scholarly journals, they can be classified based on their accessibility as follows:

• Open Access journals
• Subscription journals
• Hybrid open access journals

Open Access Journals

Subscription Journal

In comparison to Subscription(traditional) journals which charge readers with a subscription fee to access the journals, Open Access journals provide journals for free.

However, many authors and researchers come into conflict when it comes to choosing between; Subscription and Open Access Journals, to publish their articles.

Here are some key points to be considered while making this decision.

1. When you publish your article in an Open Access journal it implies that more people will be able to view it since there is no restriction on the accessibility.
2. Generally, the publishers charge authors/researchers a basic fee at the time of submission that includes editorial and peer review-related costs.

In case of open access journals, the fee is either subsidized by academic institutions or government agencies.

3. From a subscription cost perspective, some publishers may charge a huge subscription fee to those who want to avail their journals. These hefty charges may even cause some libraries to terminate subscriptions. This prompts the authors/researchers to publish articles in Open Access journals or to submit their articles to publications with reasonable subscription charges.
4. Despite the cost reduction in Open Access Journals, there are authors who resort to Subscription journals. The main reason being the standard quality of Subscription journals at www.writemypapers.org. Many researchers go by the publication’s “brand-name”, as publishing journals under a known brand can boost their chances of being promoted and being known in the marketplace.

Hybrid Open Access Journal

A hybrid open access journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access. In this case the subscribers can access all articles in the journal without any restrictions but if the author/researcher would want some of his/her articles to be accessed by all, then a Hybrid open access journal would be an ideal choice.

This way the author is assured of the publication’s prestigious brand name and his/her work also gains visibility among the readers.