I am currently writing a paper for publication in a journal. My supervisors suggested a journal that is a generic journal covering my topic and my field amongst many other topics and I agreed to this one as appropriate. It does not have a very high impact factor but is acceptable. One of the co-authors suggested submitting it to a open-access journal which is more specific to my topic and it is a recently started journal (only a year or so old), but its sister journals are very reputable and well used and read by the community.
When I looked up this open-access journal, I liked the idea of submitting to it, but my supervisor said that because its open access the paper will invite more harsh comments than the other "normal" peer reviewed journal. I understand what he means and he has a point because there are some aspects of my work that are controversial, but at the same time I know I do have a good and unique dataset which should(?!) withstand the scrutiny.
Any advice/comment on which one to go for? Has anyone published in an open-access journal before? Is it harder to get the work published there?

Hi Poppy,

I have never published in an open access journal before, but did manage to get some publications in the peer reviewed ones. My impression is that the peer reviewed journals are pretty hard already: takes a long time, have to make peer reviewers changes and if you are unlucky it gets rejected altogether.

If an open access journal would be more difficult, what would then be the advantage of sending it there? Is it not that the peer reviewed ones are the ones which have most impact?

Just because a journal is open access does not mean it isnt peer reviewed. It just means its freely available for people to read after its published instead of having to pay for it.

Thanks Avalon68,

I did not know that, learned something today.

:-)

It may be worth keeping in mind some open access journals charge the authors £££ to get their work published. In contrast, as a subscriber, the costs are recovered from the end users so the costs are much lower for the author...