OPEN ACCESS - KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL | HOME PAGE

The publishing practices of open access journals are based on discipline-specific publishing practices and tendencies. The general culture within each scientific discipline is very important. The natural and life sciences, for example, are characterized by journal publications. On the contrary, the humanities and social sciences publish their results in books.

Those preferences influence the publishing practices of open access journals and, as a result, there are fewer OA journals in the humanities and social sciences than there are in the natural and life sciences. This is also due to the fact that the results of the humanities and social sciences are not easily used commercially.

With language itself being a subject of research, OA journals in the humanities and social sciences are often published in languages other than English.

In natural and life sciences, preprints are a common publishing practice. As we know, preprints can be self-archived, meaning that they can be made freely accessible through the internet. In the humanities and social sciences, where preprints are not a common practice, a large amount of scientific content remains inaccessible.