How To Write a Medical Case Report: Step 7 - Consider Publishing Open Access

When looking for journals to submit your case report, you will often see in the instructions for authors the choice of publishing Open Access. What does that mean? And why would someone choose to publish Open Access when it costs thousands of dollars?

Open Access is one of three journal publishing models:

• Traditional or Subscription Model: an author does NOT pay to publish their article; the reader (or library) pays for access to read the article
• Open Access Model: an author does pay to publish their article; the reader does NOT pay for access to read the article
• Hybrid Model: the journal gives the author the choice to publish their specific article Open Access or not; the reader see certain articles within the journal as open access/free to read, and other articles not free to read/behind a paywall (or if affiliated with a library, requests the article via interlibrary loan).

Because Open Access shifts a journal's income generation to authors, they charge authors APCs or article processing charges. These range from $500-$12,000.

Open Access is beneficial for many reasons. Your article is free to read for everyone, so more eyes can see it. More eyes means more metrics. Scientific knowledge is more widely disseminated. (And your funding agency, such as NIH or NSF may require you to publish Open Access.)

To support our faculty and students in choosing Open Access, the Library has an Open Access Publishing Fund that will cover up to $2500 per author per year. Learn more about the fund: https://library.achehealth.edu/open-access-funding