Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) is one of the largest open access journal publishers. Since my major is in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a focus on Construction Engineering and Management, I decided to look at the open journal of civil engineering which is part of the SCIRP. This journal is currently publishing more than 200 open access, online, and peer-reviewed journals in a wide range of disciplines. SCIRP has over 5000 professional editorial board members which facilitate the publishing activities. Over 41000 articles have already been published with SCRIP. SCRIP aims to contribute to the progress and applications of science. This journal is located in China and they believe that due to globalization, this is not an issue.
This journal describes open access as follows:
“All original research papers published by SCIRP are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication. To be able to provide open access journals, SCIRP defrays operation costs from authors and subscription charges only for its printed version. Open access publishing allows an immediate, worldwide, barrier-free, open access to the full text of research papers, which is in the best interests of the scientific community.
• High visibility for maximum global exposure with open access publishing model
• Rigorous peer review of research papers
• Prompt faster publication with less cost
• Guaranteed targeted, multidisciplinary audience”
With regards to the open access movement, I believe that it adds a significant value to the body of knowledge considering that it can be accessed by anyone. However at least in my field (construction engineering and management), I have not found any open access articles which could guide me in my area of research. This is due to the fact that most researchers in my field choose to publish in other journals such as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) journal since such journals have a higher H index value. Also, I have never referenced any open access journals in my research since the scope of the available research in such journals is very narrow. As this is a cause and affect issue not many researchers are encouraged to publish their work in open access journals. If the professors advising the graduate students encourage them to publish in such journals, in the future we may have a larger group of researchers interested in publishing their work in the open access journals.
