About open access publishing By Ir J.A.J. van Leunen Retired physicist & software researcher Location: Asten, the Netherlands Website: http://www.e-physics.eu/ Communicate your comments to info at scitech.nl. Last version: March 7, 2013 Abstract A large variety of types of open access publishing exist. Its advantages and problems are treated in this paper. Two-sided open access Several forms of full and partly open access publishing exist. With two-sided open access we mean that no blocks exist, neither for the authors, nor for the readers. This kind of open access is implemented by some e-print archives such as viXra and PubMed Central. The authors must follow some easily performable rules that guard accessibility of the published texts with standard means. The papers must fall into one of the available categories. No fee is required for publishing the paper. Authors and others may decide to donate the archive, but there exists no obligation. Authors are rubricated into author libraries. In this way an author can create his own e-print library. The readers have free access to the published articles. Quasi two-sided open access A slightly different approach is implemented by arXiv. This institute requires registration for the authors. New unregistered authors must be endorsed by a registered author that has published recently in the same category. After endorsement the new author becomes registered. Still contributions can be refused by the arXiv institute. Contributions from recognized institutions might be accepted without applying the endorsement mechanism. Authors are rubricated into author libraries. Readers have free access to the published media. E-print archives E-print archives such as viXra, PubMed Central and arXiv support an effective revision mechanism. The full open access media do not implement quality filters that block faulty or low quality papers from their archives. ArXiv applies the registration and endorsement mechanism that only represent a weak, rather passive quality filter. This means that readers must perform the quality filtering. A quality review service might ease that filter process, but such a service does not yet exist. Open access Journals Some journals offer what they call open access publishing. In this case the reader has free access to the published media, but the author must pay a significant fee and the paper must pass a peer review process. The author fee compensates the publishing institute for the fact that it cannot collect a membership fee from the readers. Often the same institute offers peer reviewed journals that require a membership fee. Publishing a number of papers in such open access journals costs a small