To mark International Open Access Week, Piera Demma Cara, publisher of Materials Research Express, talks to Michael Banks about the lessons learned from switching the journal to being fully open access
Tell us about Materials Research Express (MRX)?
MRX is an open-access journal that focuses on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. Published by IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, it is devoted to publishing new experimental and theoretical research in the properties, characterization, design and fabrication of all classes of materials including biomaterials, nanomaterials, polymers, smart materials, electronics, thin films and more. The journal, which offers rapid peer review, has an international editorial board that is led by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Meyya Meyyappan from NASA’s Ames Research Centre in the US.
What was the original publishing model for MRX and what is it now?
MRX launched in 2013 as a hybrid open-access journal, which gave authors the choice to make their article immediately and openly accessible at the point of publication. From 1 October 2019, MRX changed to a fully open-access journal model, so that papers published from that date were made immediately and permanently free to access under a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY).
Can you explain these different publishing models?
Hybrid open access or subscription-only journals typically require the reader to pay to access some or all of the content. In a fully open-access journal, the final published version of record of every article is made immediately and permanently free to access and released under a licence that permits free reuse, such as a CC BY licence. This licence grants anyone – both authors of the article and other researchers – the rights to share the article or reuse parts or all of the original content from the article for any purpose, providing that there is clear attribution to the original author and their work. To support the costs of managing peer review and publication in a fully open-access journal, we apply an article publication charge (APC) to published articles, but other funding mechanisms are also used to fund open-access publication models.
What were the reasons for the switch?
IOP Publishing has long been supportive of open access. We wanted to show that support by flipping one of our larger journals to open access. The move also allowed us to understand the impacts on the journal in terms of submissions and published articles.
And what are the benefits of doing this?
Through the move, we have made important materials science research freely accessible. We’ve seen increased average downloads per article with some being downloaded and read over 2000 times – over 900 times in the first three months of publication alone – putting them in the top 50 of most downloaded articles since 2013.
What were some of the challenges switching MRX to an open-access model?
MRX is a journal of reference for the materials research community and has always been widely inclusive. Retaining the same author demographic after introducing an APC was probably the biggest challenge for us but to make this transition as fair and smooth as possible, we supported authors wherever possible. We set an APC price of £1100 and for the first month after we switched, IOP Publishing covered this APC for all submitted articles. Following that, and throughout 2020, we have offered authors a reduced APC of £825 – a 25% discount – and a further discount on this for authors from lower-income countries.
Did this have an effect?
The move has been well received by the community. Although we have received submissions from over 70 countries, we have, however, seen a substantial reduction in the total number of submissions. In 2020 we will publish about 1500 articles against almost 4500 in 2019. There has been an especially stark reduction in submissions from authors in India, which is a useful reminder of the considerable geographical differences in the level of financial support for open-access publishing.
Boosting diversity in open access
Has the switch impacted the peer review and publication process of the journal?
Not at all. IOP Publishing is committed to providing authors with a high-level author service throughout the whole publication process. This means that both authors’ experience and journal-quality standards will not be affected by the switch to open access and that the journal will also continue to prioritise excellence and rigour in the publishing service it provides to the whole materials science community, including authors, reviewers and readers.
Is it possible that other IOP Publishing journals may follow MRX’s lead?
We are always looking at new opportunities to support open-science practices and expand access to research. We are committed to annually reviewing the opportunities to transition our hybrid open-access journals to being fully open access. However, converting the model of a journal that serves an active, global community of researchers requires careful consideration and our priority must always be centred around the needs of those research communities.
- International Open Access Week runs from 19 to 25 October 2020.
