Open Access Stigma

At his Open and Shut? blog, Richard Poynder addresses the question of quality in open access journals -- that is, the concern among many scientists that OA journals tend to be lower-quality than traditional journals. Many open access journals are new, and it can take awhile for them to ramp up their impact factors. "If some OA journals appear to be of lower quality than their [traditional] counterparts, this may simply be a function of their youth, and say very little about their intrinsic value," Poynder writes. He adds, "For the foreseeable future, therefore, sceptical voices will surely continue to argue that OA journals lack quality control, and so are best avoided."