Details About Peer Reviewed Open Access Journals

By Stephen Bennett


Academic journals are periodical publications containing articles on book reviews, review articles and original research. Their purpose is for researchers to have a venue where they can impart their knowledge to others, contribute in improving natural knowledge and to perfect every Philosophical Arts and Sciences. Articles are usually refereed or peer reviewed to prevent those containing fraudulent data from being published.

These articles are done by researchers with funding from universities, institutions and government agencies and donate them to journal publications. These are then sold to universities, institutions and government agencies, even the same ones who funded the research usually through subscription. This is why peer reviewed open access journals are getting popular because it virtually costs nothing to read them.

Researchers in this method receive funding the same way but their works are accessible to anyone that has an internet connection allowing them to read without subscription fee. Barriers like legal and permission ones are removed also such as restrictions in licensing and copyright. Authors though sometimes pay them for their articles to get published.

Several varieties of OA journals are there such as full where every content can be accessed freely. Hybrid ones have only some contents openly accessible and delayed where access is granted after twelve or twenty four months. These works could either be solicited, where individuals were asked to submit their work or unsolicited where they just submit it without being asked to.

These, same as traditional publications, are peer reviewed or have people with similar competence the author has evaluate it. They were selected by publishers and review the works anonymously to avoid getting influenced. Doing this method provides credibility, improves performance and maintain standards of quality.

They help in deciding if the work gets accepted, rejected, or acceptable even but with revisions that has to be done. Group of experts about a specific field having qualifications and ability in being reasonably impartial in reviewing is needed. Accomplishing impartiality is difficult specially in fields having less narrow definition or inter disciplinary ones.

This makes the significance that an idea has, either good or bad, harder to become appreciated widely among their contemporaries. Refereeing though is considered important to academic quality but preventing all invalid research from getting published is impossible. Although it is done anonymously by tradition, some can currently give their comments publicly which anyone can read.

Identifying if that journals was refereed or not can be done in numerous ways with one being limiting your search criteria when using databases. This option is offered readily by some search screens while others require you to click the advance or expert option. Although some databases have no option for limiting their search criteria like this.

You could also examine the published journal physically or online by looking at the masthead at its cover where all information about them which includes if they were refereed. Another way is by looking at the ways its written and includes references using footnotes and bibliography. And finding their official would help in determining this but sometimes it is inaccurate still.




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