IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q4 2019 - 5

Additionally, and no less important, the unrestricted
access of articles published on OJ-CAS will mean that
the reader audience will be intrinsically much broader
than any of the subscription-based journals. It is not
surprising that open access papers inherently tend to
have a greater measured scientific impact than those
that are not, everything else being equal.
Along these lines, some interesting consideration
should be made. The CAS Society distinguishes itself
from some other IEEE societies for an important aspect.
That is the strong multidisciplinary nature of many of the
CAS topics. The straightforward accessibility of OJ-CAS
papers, also to non-IEEE members, goes hand in hand
with CASS's multidisciplinarity. As an example, think of
the mutual impact to advances in biotechnologies, or in
neurosciences, when non-IEEE researchers in academia
or industry will be able to gain access to what our Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BioCAS) community, or
our neuro-morphic technologists, will publish next on
OJ-CAS. Or think of the higher cross-pollination that can
be ignited between our published research in nonlinear
circuits and systems on OJ-CAS and non-IEEE journals
such as Nature, or Acta Mathematica, if only the barriers due to subscriptions are lowered. Please note that
this is not a blue-sky aspiration. Academic libraries and
corporate subscriptions have finite budgets everywhere
and will tend to spend it on fewer specialized subscriptions, leaving all other readers to fetch high-quality research publications on open access journals. This is the
present and it is poised to extend.
The cost aspect brings us to the last important point.
Namely that, unlike traditional subscription-based journals, the costs of publishing on an OA journal, including
OJ-CAS, fall on the authors. Provided that, after peer-

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review, a manuscript has been accepted for publication,
the authors are nominally responsible for the payment
of an article-processing charge (APC) and that is not
negligible (please visit OJ-CAS's website). However,
APCs are often financed by an author's institution or
the funder supporting their research. Which means
that, depending on the individual circumstances, the
net costs to the authors, after the institution/funder's
contributions are accounted, will vary from similar
(possibly less) dollar amounts as to a regular transactions paper, too much more if funding is unavailable.
The financial agencies are in process to change the
granting budgets to include the due APCs. Also, to come
forward to you, discounts to authors that are CAS members are offered. It should also be noted that a paper's
APC is only one among the many other components of
a research budget. As engineers, it is in our nature to
evaluate trade-offs and determine where to invest or
to pivot for the max desirable outcome. With all that
said, prospective authors should carefully evaluate
their specific situation before embarking into an article
submission, avoiding rather problematic circumstances with insufficient funding, should the peer-review result into a positive outcome. After all, an open-access
published paper has a higher potential to bring more
benefit (readers and citations) to authors than regular
published same paper.
In conclusion, we are truly excited about the introduction of the IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems. This puts CASS in a very strong position with the
rapid proliferation of open access peer-reviewed publications, serving our members, opening the doors to a
far broader audience and facilitating further knowledge
synergy by lowering some access barriers.

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IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q4 2019

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