The Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry Becomes an Open-access Peer-reviewed Journal

The Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry Becomes an Open-access Peer-reviewed Journal

In the traditional publication practice, all journals give free submission, peer review, and publication either in hard paper copy or online. But the published articles can be accessed only through a subscription fee. The access to full published scientific articles needs a fee, paid by subscriptions of university libraries, institutions, and hospitals, or the readers themselves. Through the copyrights transfer agreement, even the authors of the papers cannot get free access of their own articles easily. Consequently, about 75% of published articles cannot be accessed unless the reader works in an institution which offers access to those articles or the reader can pay for his/her own.The other publication practice is the open access journals. Recently, more and more journals are offering more free access to get the articles online because the fees have been paid by the authors of the articles in the name of “article processing charge” when the manuscript is submitted. The shift to an open access model will have advantage for readers who lack entry to the current subscription system. On September 4, 2018, the funding agencies of 11 European countries announced “Plan S,” requiring that all papers they fund be published in open access journal by 2020. Therefore, more scientific articles will be available in open access journals in the future.