Open Access and Online Journals in Orthopaedics: What Does the Future Hold?

An orthopaedic surgeon has just completed a clinical outcomes research project in his area of expertise and wishes to publish a report in a widely read journal so that he can share his findings with the orthopaedic community. After the manuscript was rejected by two widely read subscription-based orthopaedic journals, the author submits the work to a so-called “peer-reviewed open access” orthopaedic journal that he finds online. Within two months, he receives a congratulatory acceptance letter stating that the manuscript has been accepted without revision and will be published both online and in print with open access. He is required to pay a $1400 processing fee to publish the work. He is hesitant to proceed because of his unfamiliarity with the title of the journal that he has selected, open access publishing, and the request for a processing fee. Although the first open access journals did not appear in the biomedical literature until the 1990s, such journals have assumed …