Conflict of Interest in Open-Access Publishing

Open-access journals, in which the authors pay a publication fee, have an incentive to publish a high volume of articles. This letter explores the matter of conflict of interest in the growing number of these journals. To the Editor: The Perspective articles by Wolpert, Frank, Carroll, and Haug (Feb. 28 issue)(1)-(4) address both the problems that are raised by open-access journals and the potential value of this alternative publishing model. Open-access journals are those that participate in any publication arrangement in which content is available to readers online, in digital form, generally without charge or copyright restriction. Readers can search databases without paying a fee and can lawfully read, print, further distribute, and cite the full text of copyrighted literature, licensed literature, or both. In the most common arrangement, authors pay to publish and retain ...