Pros and cons
Arguments in favour of Open Access
- Increased visibility and higher citation rates
- Fast, toll-free access to information
- Good findability via search engines and reference services
- All the benefits of digital documents
- Improved information supply and a way out of the serials crisis
- Promotes international and inter-disciplinary cooperation
- Greater research efficiency through early discussion of findings
- Authors retain exploitation rights
- Open access to publicly-funded research results
- Long-term document availability
- Benefits in networked, IT-supported work environments
- Early establishment of priority
Reservations about Open Access
- Reservations about quality control
- Findability issues
- Long-term storage of digital documents
- Reservations about authenticity of documents
- Legal concerns
- Financeability of the author-pays model
- Concerns regarding allocation of publishing funds and conflicts of interest
- Worries that self-archiving is time consuming
- Open Access: a challenge to non-profit publishers
- Impossibility of selecting target groups for information
