Selecting the Best Open Access Journal Articles: To What Extent does this go Beyond Being a Subjective Exercise?

Abstract

At the end of 2016 and 2017 a team of staff in the National Institute of Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University (DCU) published a list of what it judged to have been the top 10 open access journal articles produced in the general area of Blended, Online and Digital (BOLD) education over the course of each year. The purpose of the initiative was to more widely flag valuable professional readings to those working in the field and to promote debate and further knowledge of new and emerging research in area. A secondary internal objective was to help raise awareness and encourage members of the NIDL team to more deeply engage with published literature. This paper critically reflects on both the value and usefulness of this exercise, including the selection criteria, chosen methodology and validity of our top 10 selections. It briefly describes and offers an analysis of the selected articles and then invites discussion on the trustworthiness of our selections and feedback on some of the wider lessons arising from the initiative. In particular, the paper identifies and reflects on the blurring of boundaries between open and closed publications, the growth of review and meta-analysis articles, and the continuing value of traditional restricted publications. Finally, in the spirit of Richard Steele, a great Irish writer and co-founder of “The Spectator”, who claimed that “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body”, we invite critical self-reflection on the most important features of a really good journal article.