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COBRA: Managing Your Scholarly Identity

This guide focuses on managing your academic presence, where we delve into the nuances of cultivating a distinguished scholarly persona.

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) refers to information that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. 

Under the traditional scholarly publishing model, the scholar or institution pays a recurring subscription fee to the journal publisher for access to its content (Li, 2020). Academic and corporate libraries pay for more than 90% of the subscriptions to scientific journals (Johnson, Watkinson & Mabe, 2018, referenced in Li). 

Open access models aim to flip that fee to the author, the authors’ institution, or the authors’ research funders (Li, 2020). That way, scholars can access a journal's articles regardless of their institution's budget constraints. Rather than subscriptions to access articles after publication, OA has authors pay an article processing charge (APC) before publication to cover the production costs. 

Benefits for Researchers

Archiving your work in a repository like JMU Scholarly Commons is an extra step. Here's why it might be worth your time:

  • "For low- and middle-income countries, OA publishing breaks traditional financial barriers and allows unrestricted, equal access to scholarly information to people all over the globe" (Tennant, et al. 2016).

  • According to a 2014 report from Nature, Open Access papers are 2-3 times more likely to be read than non-OA papers (Swift, 2024)

  • In 2016, SPARC Europe conducted a literature review of studies on Open Access citations - 46 out of 70 studies show a citation advantage for Open Access papers (Swift, 2024).

  • A large scale literature review from 2018 found that Open Access papers receive 18% more citations on average (Swift, 2024).

  • Open Access papers are more likely to be cited on Wikipedia and mainstream media outlets allowing the research to reach a wider audience. One study found that on Wikipedia, Open Access articles are 47% more likely to be cited than non-Open Access paper (Swift, 2024).

Open Access Publishing in Business Disciplines

Different Open Access Business Models

  • Gold: Refers to the final version of record (VOR) of an article published in a fully open access journal that makes all articles immediately, permanently, and freely available on the journal’s website.
  • Green: Refers to the author or a third party archiving the author-accepted manuscript (AAM) by depositing the paper into a freely available public access repository, such as JMU Scholarly Commons or arXiv.
  • Hybrid OA: Refers to articles that are published in a subscription journal, but whose version of record is nevertheless made freely available based on the author’s payment of an APC to the publisher or journal

Few gold OA journals have emerged in business disciplines and only the Economics Department has included one on their promotion and tenure guidelines' journal lists. We highly recommend Laakso & Björk's 2022 article for an overview about why open access has been slower to take root in business disciplines.

Learn More

What Does That Mean for Us?

Because of the lack of gold OA journals, CoB researchers who wish to make their research more openly available must pursue the Green or Hybrid OA routes. 

Green OA

Upload a copy of the author accepted manuscript to JMU Scholarly Commons. These versions will be findable in Google Scholar and allow users to decide whether to request the publisher's version of record via Interlibrary Loan. 

Hybrid OA

1.Apply for funding through JMU's Open Access APC Fund. Since most APC charges exceed the amount you're eligible for ($1,200 per article for a hybrid journal), you will need to ask for matching funds from your department or pay the remainder out of pocket. The price range for APCs posted by journals on The Financial Times 50 is between $1,800 and $6,000, with 70% of the APCs between $2,700 and $3,300, according to Laakso & Björk (2022).

2. Submit your work to a journal that is covered by one of our Read and Publish Deals, which will make your article Open Access at no additional cost to you. Current Read and Publish deals of interest to CoB faculty include ACM, Wiley, Springer Nature and Cambridge journals. 

Useful Links

I Want to Archive an Article. Can I?

Think about a paper you have published. To determine whether it can be archived (shared by Green Open Access), you'll need to figure out the journal's policies about archiving your work.

The website Sherpa Romeo aggregates open access policies across publishers and analyzes them. Search by journal title to see what version you can post, where it can be posted, and if an embargo applies. 

Exemplar - Journal of Management & Organization

Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library has a guide that reviews the 3 primary versions generated during different stages of publishing a scholarly article. 

Submitted Manuscript

or Pre-Print

The original version submitted to a journal, prior to peer review.

Usually, publishers allow sharing of this version. 

Accepted Manuscript

or Post-Print or AAM

The version after peer review (the version closest to the published version) but without the formatting done by the publisher. 

Many publishers allow this version to be shared in OA repositories, though an embargo period (e.g. 6-24 months after publication) may be imposed.

Published Version

or Version of Record (VoR)

The final, published version with all publishers' formatting.

Most publishers DO NOT allow this version to be shared in open access unless the work is published in Gold OA journal.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library. (2024, August 30). Open Access: Versions of Manuscripts. https://libguides.lb.polyu.edu.hk/open_access/version-of-manuscript 

The library notes that "sharing the right version at the right place helps you increase the visibility of your research without infringing copyright."

Exemplar - Finding Green OA Versions in Google Scholar

Digital repositories allow scholars to share their work more broadly. Some repositories are focused on specific disciplines, while others are tied to an institution. Journal publishers may specify in what type of repository you can archive your articles, which is why we encourage the use of tools like Sherpa Romeo and How Can I Share It? before you upload anywhere.

The University of Michigan outlines the benefits of archiving your work in a repository:

  • A stable URL for the work that you can share with others or post to social media, your personal website, etc. This stable URL makes it easier for others to cite your work. You also won’t have to worry about broken links, or about migrating and re-posting your work to a new web page if you move to a new institution, or if your website moves to a new platform.
  • Indexing by Google and Google Scholar, which makes your work more discoverable by others
  • Some form of feedback about how the work has been used: how many views it has received, download counts, shares, etc.

Find a Repository

The Open Access Toolkit defines an embargo as "A period during which access to scholarly work is restricted to those who have paid for access. Once the embargo period ends, an author’s work can be deposited in a repository if permitted by the publisher (Imperial College London, n.d.)."

Publishers may set embargo periods that range from 3 months to several years. Sherpa Romeo can help you determine whether an embargo applies to an article you have published.