Scientific journals in Latin America on their way towards open access: A diagnosis on policies and editorial strategies

This paper presents the main results of a study carried out in order to assess the current state of policies and strategies used by editorial boards of Latin American scientific journals, to promote use and reuse of open access scientific production, as well as to identify publishers and authors' perceptions and attitudes regarding these policies and strategies. Quantitative and qualitative analysis was carried out on data obtained from 516 journals and questionnaires applied to 400 publishers and 101 authors. Although most of the journals are free and considered as open access by their publishers, actually, in many cases they have established restrictive copyright policies or lack explicit information on terms and conditions of use and publishing of their articles. Institutional and editorial strategies to promote open access are scarce and have little visibility among authors. Sustainable funding and lack of familiarity with open access model are among the most important barriers for Latin America push these initiatives forward. Latin America needs a better and larger alignment and coherence of institutional and editorial policies with principles and strategies that promote open access, as well as further training for editors and authors.