OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING — “SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR”

Scientific knowledge needs to be widely disseminated across the globe, for it to be critically analyzed or to be built upon for future studies. The conventional publication model has been less accessible due to prohibitive subscription costs and hence the need arose for the open access model where the readers would have free access. The Open Science movement is not only about open-access journals but also includes open source, open data and methodology, open peer review, open-access indexing, and archiving. The prototype open access model is the gold model where researchers (themselves or supported by grants or funding agencies) pay certain article processing charges and the readers have free access to the content without any restrictions. Additionally, there is a need for free-to-use open-access platforms or repositories like PubMed Central to archive the open-access content. Institutional repository is another way for collecting, archiving, and distributing the scholarly contents of an academic institution. Preprint servers allow archiving manuscripts before they are submitted to or undergo review for publication, and they offer an important platform for freely sharing knowledge. While open-access model looks attractive, it has its challenges. Currently, the change to open-access model has meant the transfer of the financial burden, earlier borne by the readers, to the authors in the form of APCs. Irrespective of the model, there is a need to reconsider the high subscription costs and the article processing charges which are often prohibitive for many. Science must be accessible to the researchers and the public at a reasonable cost without delay.

Scholarly journals have long been the main vehicle for the dissemination of scientific knowledge across the globe.Any research should ideally reach the larger scientific world and eventually be put to use for the benefit of the mankind.A new study builds upon the previous research, and it is thus important to ensure that the research results are analyzed, scrutinized, criticized, and tested by other researchers.For a long time, scholarly journals have been subscription based, with readers having to pay for the scientific content through journal or society subscriptions.There was a felt need for an alternative model to make the scientific knowledge accessible to the readers without cost and also for eliminating the paywalls for reprints [1,2].
Over the last couple of decades, a major transformation has happened in the form of the Open Access (OA) initiative.It all started in the early 2000s with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) [3], the Bethesda (2003) [4], and the Berlin declaration on open

PUBLICATION ETHICS PERSPECTIVE
access (2003) [5].The Budapest Initiative envisaged the twin concepts of 'self-archiving' and 'open-access journals' [3].The Bethesda and the Berlin declarations defined the criteria for open-access publication, drafted ideas for the transition to OA publishing, and involved all stakeholders concerned (scientists, institutions, funding agencies, and publishers) [4,5].
In 2018, major funding agencies in Europe formed the 'cOAlition S' alliance which works for the implementation of 'Plan S'.Another platform for quick and free sharing of research are the preprint servers like MedRxiv and BioRxiv.With preprint servers, scholarly articles can be uploaded before submission to a journal and before undergoing peer review.The advantage is faster dissemination of scientific content, bypassing the delay due to editorial process and peer review.These platforms have been particularly helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic.However, the downside of preprints is the appearance of some poor quality and unscreened scientific content in the public domain.Hence, there is a need for clear communication to the readers that a certain manuscript is a preprint and what does preprint imply.To curb the issue, preprint servers have adopted a more stringent screening procedure to weed out poor-quality articles [1,10].
There is also a need for free- With the advances in digitization, the idea of openaccess publishing is a welcome move since many print journals are switching to the online-only format.The Open Access movement in the current format has its pros and cons (Figure 1).The idea behind the movement was to cut down on the journal subscription and reprint costs, make the scientific content available free to the readers worldwide without any barriers, cut down on the publication costs, shorten the time to publication, facilitate multi-center collaborations and make the overall process faster [16,17].
Have the above-mentioned goals been achieved with the current model of OA journals (gold OA)?We do know that nothing in this world comes for free!The cost toward 'subscription fee' has been replaced by 'article processing charges' (APCs) and the burden has shifted from institutions and libraries to authors and funding agencies.
Some of the institutions have 'read and publish agreements', meaning that researchers from these institutions do not pay the APCs and the institutions pay for them.However, they are localized to certain geographical regions and few institutions [18].The much-talked Plan S has not been inclusive, principally supporting only the gold OA model, with no place for the hybrid model.Although Plan S envisaged to have a capping on the APCs, the current charges are exorbitant and prohibitive.It would be very difficult for researchers from low and middle-income countries, early-career researchers, or any researcher with no funding to publish in these gold OA journals.Although some of these journals offer APC discounts and waivers, they are way too few [19,20].
The other major issue is the proliferation of predatory journals and publishers.Since the researchers worldwide are under the pressure to publish or perish, many resort to publication in journals that bypass the good publication practices and editorial policies, with quantity being preferred over quality.Many of the subscription journals with robust editorial processes are considered prestigious by the authors, and as yet there is no definitive data to show that OA model works better than the conventional subscription model in terms of citations, visibility or the research workflow [2,17,21].
From the perspective of the authors who do not have liberal funding available to them, there needs to be concerted effort to ensure their good research is not left out.Irrespective of the model, there should be a capping on the subscription costs and article processing charges.The alternative models like platinum open access are good and their viability must be explored and understood.Quality needs to prevail over quantity and good science must be accessible to both the researchers and the public at a reasonable cost without much delay.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Open-access publishing -the pros and cons [6] goal was to ensure that all funded research was published in open-access journals, on open-access platforms, and archived in open-access repositories without any embargo period[6].They laid out ten principles for the achievement of this goal.
The open science movement is not only about OA journals but also includes open source, open data and methodology, open peer review, open-access indexing, and archiving [1].We have various types of open-access publishing: a. Gold open access is the model with article processing charges (APCs) paid by the authors, funding agencies, or institutions.It is one of the least restrictive models with articles being freely available without any embargo period and to everyone [7,8].b.Platinum open access, also known as diamond open access, is usually sponsored by professional societies or institutions.Here, neither the authors need not pay any APCs nor the readers have to pay to access the articles [7,8].
[1,15]r to PMC, there are other openaccess repositories such as KoreaMed Synapse[13].Institutional repository (IR) collects, archives, and distributes the scholarly contents generated in an academic institution.An IR can include any type of scholarly output, from research papers to dissertations, students' presentations, blogs, and newsletters.It is an OA platform that helps in showcasing the institutional work in a focused way to a smaller group of audience and can even include material not suited for a journal publication.These IRs usually deploy a digital platform like Digital Commons, and the contents are often searchable on Google Scholar.Since IRs are not indexed with Medline, Scopus, and Embase, their literature is less retrievable compared to that in an indexed open-access journal[1,14].Pre and post-publication open peer review is also an integral part of open-science publishing.Here, either the comments or the identity of the reviewer(s) or both open to the research community or even to the public.It is an alternative system to the conventional blinded method of reviewing, and it makes the reviewers more accountable, comments more constructive, and the process more transparent.It also speeds up the review and helps recognize the reviewers' work in conjunction with platforms like Publons (Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service) and ORCID.The downsides of open review may be reluctance of junior researchers while reviewing seniors' works, bias in review, and less critical or timid peer review due to the openness[1,15].
[1,11] open-access platforms or repositories to archive the open-access literature.Two such major open-access platforms are the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and PubMed Central (PMC)[1].Both check for the editorial policies and adherence to the best principles in line with openaccess publishing before they index a source[1,11].PubMed Central (PMC) is a repository of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)'s National Library of Medicine.It provides a free, full-text, digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journals[1,11].It has more than 8 million free full-texts, including preprints, funded by NIH since June 2020.The PMC-archived journals provide the published contents in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format.