When should I publish with open access? A handy flow chart

Mike Taylor over at the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog created the wonderful flowchart above to help researchers decide whether to post in an open access journal. A few months ago the British Government made the tremendous step forward of announcing that government funded research should be published in open access journals. The flowchart is in response to the UK Research Council’s decision to allow research funded by the British tax payer to be paywalled for up to 24 months.

“As part of the progressive erosion of RCUK’s initially excellent open-access policy, barrier-based publishers somehow got them to accept their “open-access decision tree“, which you can now find on page 7 of the toothless current version of the policy. The purpose of this manoeuvre by the Publishers Association is to lend an air of legitimacy to continuing to deny citizens access to the research they funded for up to 24 months after publication. It’s to the House of Lords’ enduring shamethat they swallowed this, when they must know that there is no justification for embargoes of any length.”