Open-Access Publishing in Tourism and Hospitality Research

This paper examines various models of academic publishing and considers their relative advantages for authors, readers, academic institutions and society. Relevant factors in driving authors’ choice of journal include the journal’s scope, reputation and publishing model used. Authors’ choices are shaped by the expectations of academic institutions and strongly determine both access to readers and the benefits to society. From an analysis of 174 journals in the tourism and hospitality field, four publication models are identified and compared: ‘subscription-only’ and the ‘Green’, ‘Gold’ and ‘Platinum’ open-access models. The findings of a survey of 42 editors of journals in the field are then presented. These suggest that subscription-based journals (be they subscription-only or hybrid) tend to be owned by commercial publishing companies and have the highest reputation, as measured by their position in one or more indexing systems. They also tend to have significantly larger numbers of paper submissions than open-access journals, especially those that use the Platinum open-access model. While some commentators have suggested that editors of open-access journals with article-processing charges may be tempted to lower their scientific standards to maximise revenues, no evidence was found that such journals have higher acceptance rates than their subscription-based equivalents.