Editorial -Open Access Movement: Welcome!_Sparks Vis Sci 1:1, 2016
Open Access Movement: Welcome! 
During the years I was engaged in my Ph.D course, I remember that relatively few and very authoritative journals were available for publishing studies regarding the topics of my interest. All these journals had high impact factors, but at that time maybe none of them allowed downloading papers without a fee so that the dissemination of high-quality scientific knowledge was somehow hampered, and hardly could reach those researchers who did not belong to academic institutions, thereby who were not funded to do bibliographic research. The interval between submission and eventual acceptance was of the order of months and revisions were extremely accurate, precise and strict. In turn, the author(s) were not required to pay for publication in case their study was accepted.
In the last years an impressive amount of new journals adhering to the so-called Open-Access Movement have come to light. The open-access movement makes the published studies available for free to anyone, but the authors have to pay a fee in case the manuscript was accepted.
No doubt open-access journals may contribute impressively to disseminating knowledge: they are more prone to consider intriguing studies (even if weak and not yet "mature" in their first submitted version) and daring but potentially very interesting hypotheses. In my experience I have been asked to review many manuscripts submitted to open-access journals: in doing so, I have discovered plenty of hints, suggestions, ideas for my personal research projects. I feel I have been enriched by the papers I have revised at least as much as the authors of those papers have taken advantage from my revision efforts.
Yet, the publication charge upon acceptance in most cases is frankly excessive and unjustified by the editorial work, and the papers are often methodologically weak, low-quality studies; just a few weeks (or even days) waiting for the revision process (how accurate will it be in so short a time?) and virtually 100% of acceptance rate are additional factors that cast a dark shadow on the reputation or on the true intentions of many open-access journals.
Evidently, open assess journals may be bent to sacrifice quality to increase their income.
These journals, indeed, have been called "predatory" and have nothing to do with the honest Open Access Movement and the educated Open Access Journals. On the long term their policy will reveal itself a failure: low-quality level papers will be noticed by readers, and even if easy acceptance can act as a call for someone soon they will realize they do not intend to see their own surveys, stemming from months of hard work, pushed into the background and judged negatively by colleagues worldwide due to their flaws.
Genuine open access journals, that are by no means predatory journals, are a precious source of knowledge and are an exciting opportunity to contribute to increasing scientific knowledge.
So, my goal is to do all my best to serve as Editor-in-Chief Neuro-Ophthalmology & Visual Neuroscience: as long as I have my spared time available to dedicate to this challenge: an open-access journal that welcomes every study dealing with neuro-ophthalmology, visual psychophysics, and visual science in general, within a collaborative and interdisciplinary framework but requiring sound methodological approaches and following evidence-based medicine criteria.
NOVS aims at being a tool to share competence, to enhance clinical knowledge, to improve diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, to inspire new ideas, new food for thought in researchers.
This is the reason why I welcome the Open Access Movement and recommend to consider NOVN for publication.
And beware of predators.
Carlo Aleci. Md, Ph.D