Editorial

Open access Journal publishing policy has been the best solution to this growing crisis in higher educational institutions. Open access journals charge authors for publication and make their contributions freely available online. This means that scientific contents can be accessed by anyone with online access free of charge.

In June 2003 first legislation of open access was implemented in US. It is widely known as the Sabo Bill. The bill highlighted that the research papers ineligible for copyright protection if written by scientists who received substantial federal financing for their academic work. The intent of the bill was to provide free and widespread public access to the government funded papers.

When selection of journals for publication researchers are generally, looking at journal-level metrics, such as the Impact Factor. I believe that too much importance is sometimes given to this measure. However, impact factor is largely based on citations. Open Access itself equates to more citations in open access journal’s and their published articles due to free and wide circulation globally. Gradual expansion of potential readership will eventually, transform the impact of these journals world-wide and at the same time no doubt that increase their visibility as well. It is evident that Open Access journals can have similar impact to other conventional restricted access journals and therefore, prospective authors should target open access journal for future publication.

We need to understand that core academic value of promoting broad and rapid dissemination of new knowledge. It is important that there should be effective way to disseminate new knowledge globally unrestricted way.

The major advantage of open access publication is that the opportunity to publish material that is either not compatible with the print medium (for example, video clips), or relatively very expensive in print (color graphics). Moreover, open access is significantly environmentally friendly. As you could see the benefits of open access publishing philosophy is unlimited globally. There is a need to increase global awareness of the benefits of depositing scholarly work in open access repositories.

Practice of making authors pay for online publication of their articles, as described above might dissuade researchers in developing countries from contributing their research with PULSUS group open access journals. The next challenge of open access publishing philosophy is to continue exploring innovative ways to support progress in open access and offset their costs and financial sustainability.