When Alicia Kowaltowski was looking to publish new results about pancreatic cells earlier this year, she wanted a journal with an international audience and a strong reputation. The biochemist at the University of São Paulo was looking out for her student co-authors, who need to publish in prominent journals to help their chances of landing postdoctoral appointments abroad—a goal for many researchers working in developing countries. She picked the open-access (OA) journal Molecular Metabolism, produced by Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of scientific papers.
