The Adoption of Open Access Journals for Publishing Management Research: A Review of the Literature and the Experience of the University of the West Indies

The article reviews the literature in the field of academic journal publishing highlighting the phenomenon of the recent entry of Internet-driven open access journals into a field dominated by the traditional subscription journals. The article has a twofold purpose of gaining an understanding of the main features and characteristics of the open access journal system through a review of the literature; and assessing the extent of adoption of open access by researchers in the management discipline through a review of the management publications by the University of the West Indies (UWI) researchers. A sequential exploratory strategy of two phases was used. The first phase focused on the collection of secondary data on journal publishing and the second involved reviewing the publishing record of the UWI with particular reference to management research. The main finding is that open access was not fully embraced as a publishing outlet because of academic resistance derived from questions of acceptability, and the existence of a system that assigns greater recognition to the established subscription journals. The article concludes that open access journals have grown in respectability and quality and are a good option for publishing management research by authors located in developing regions, provided the operational characteristics of this mode of publishing are understood and caution in journal selection is exercised.