Open access

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Author / translator SISSA Medialab

This game has been developed by SISSA Medialab, the SISSA in house company active in scholarly publishing and science communication. It aims to foster open and productive dialogues on open access issues within the scientific community. The project celebrates the 20th anniversary of JCAP (Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics).

Open access is a scientific publication mode whereby articles in digital format are accessible free of charge. This approach is in contrast to the model historically more frequently used by scientific journals, whereby access to content is granted against payment of a subscription fee.

There are different models of open access, depending on how publication costs are incurred. In some cases, publication costs are fully covered by the authors or research group, in others by institutional funders or sponsors.

In recent decades, the drive to make articles and other publications more accessible, and faster, has increased. The reasons are many and of a very different nature: financial, given the rising prices for journal subscriptions; ethical, to guarantee access to knowledge for all; and time-related, to enable prompter scientific debate and exchanges.

Today, open access is an integral part of communication among scientists and is adopted by many as frequently as the former subscription-based model. Millions of freely digitally accessible articles are available worldwide.
Although open access seems to find universal favour, it still raises many questions, for example: who should bear the costs of publishing articles? Is there a single open access model that meets the needs of different scientific communities?

Created 23 October 2023

Last edited 14 December 2023

Topics Economy, Politics, Science

Original Italian

Policy positions

Policy position 1

The State must not interfere with the models of dissemination of scientific knowledge. The needs of the different scientific communities and the market will establish which models should prevail.

Policy position 2

The State intervention on market is meant to guarantee effective competition and to prevent monopolies. To that end, States supports the development of infrastructure shared by small and medium-sized publishers and their technological innovation. At the same time, they limit takeovers and mergers of big publishers.

Policy position 3

The State requires articles reporting on publicly-funded research to be published open access and bears publication costs.

Policy position 4

The State requires articles reporting on publicly-funded research to be made available on publicly-accessible archives with no embargo imposed by publishers.

Story cards

I am a young research chemist. Thanks to European funding, I have completed a very promising piece of research that could launch my career. I would like to publish it in a subscription-based journal that would give it the relevance it deserves, but the European Commission forces me to publish it open access. I am not allowed to publish in the journal I believe would be the best for me and I find this very unfair.

Anne Cheng

I am a Ghanaian researcher in statistical physics. I found a gold open access journal that would be perfect to publish my research. My university does not have much funding and the publisher offered us a discount on the publication fee. But although the fee is halved, it is still more than my monthly salary and I cannot afford it.

Kwame Amoako

I am editor-in-chief of a prestigious journal published by an important publisher. In France, a new law has established that researchers must always deposit a copy of their articles in a public archive. This may cause us irreparable damage, because nobody will choose to subscribe to our journals if they can still access the same content without paying. Publishers sustain unavoidable costs: at the very least, they have to pay the wages of expert staff and for a software to process the articles. How are we supposed to survive?

Maja Berg

I am a publisher of a small independent company that publishes a small number of important mathematics journals. We have decided to focus on the content of the articles and to rely on big publishers for the commercial and sales aspects. Without their support, it would be difficult to sell our journals or to get researchers to publish with us. Scientific publishing is a very competitive sector. We have therefore chosen to rely on a big publisher already known to libraries and researchers.

Pedro Ortega

I am the manager of an Italian university library. I make sure that students and researchers have access to all the resources they need. Unfortunately, subscriptions have gone up, while my budget remains the same. I am therefore forced to reduce my offer and have to decide what to cut and what to keep. I know this is a common problem for all my colleagues around the world and I try to inform researchers about different publication models by urging them to publish in open access.

Alice Manca

I am a member of a non-profit organization working to make knowledge accessible to researchers in low-income countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. I believe knowledge should have no geographical boundaries and be accessible to all, regardless of economic background. Our association negotiates agreements with publishers to obtain discounts on publication and subscription fees.

Anjali Desai

I am a project officer at the European Commission and I plan and coordinate projects on climate change. We are the ones funding this research, and it is only right that the knowledge produced thanks to taxpayers' money be free of charge and available to all. The publishing system, on the other hand, profits from publicly funded research and limits access to knowledge. The economic damage that publishers complain about is not as important as the dissemination of knowledge, especially on issues of global importance.

Rui Oliveira

I am a botany researcher. In order to do my job in the best possible way, I need to keep up to date with new publications. Unfortunately, my library does not subscribe to all the journals I need to access. I cannot wait every time for my library to provide the material I need, so I end up downloading it illegally from the internet, like all my colleagues do.

Irina Sidorova

INFO CARDSISSUE CARDS

Resource disparities between publishers

There are currently large resource disparities between large and small publishers. Those with higher revenues and profits can invest in technological innovation and become stronger on the market. Those with fewer resources, on the other hand, find it harder to be competitive. Should action be taken to support small publishers? Or would it be better to leave them more freedom of initiative?

Is it only the publishers' responsibility?

The academic system is built on the research reputation and prestige. Publishers have simply found a way to make money on this practice by publishing and promoting the journals everyone wants to publish in. If the current allocation of prestige were not so important, publishers would not have so much power.

Lack of transparency on the cost of article processing charges

There is no single criterion for setting the price for article processing charges, which varies greatly depending on the publisher and the journal. Large publishers often do not communicate which factors are taken into account in a transparent way.

Is publishing more always better?

There are those who argue that the exponential increase in the number of publications has worsened the quality of research leading, in some cases, to less replicability of results. One factor is the controversial 'publish or perish' culture, which urges researchers to produce as many articles as possible to advance their careers.

Will open access still be sustainable?

In the coming years it is likely that the number of scientific articles will continue to increase exponentially. If public funding to publish remains the same, can an open access model, such as gold, based on paying to publish, be sustainable?

Is open access a solution to rising publication costs?

Many expected that open access would solve the problem of rising publication costs. This has not happened so far. Rather, it has been accompanied by new problems such as the increasing price of publication charges (APCs).

Open access and freedom of choice

Does pushing for open access restrict the scientists’ freedom of choice? Should they choose the journal in which to publish by only taking into account the scientific aspects and not the economic models?

There is no single solution

The problems to be addressed towards a transition to full open access are very different depending on the scientific community. On the basis of this diversification, it may not be possible to consider a single publication model.

Will journals become obsolete?

According to some experts, journals will become an increasingly obsolete communication tool in the coming years, and will be replaced by alternative platforms such as preprints or overlay journals. But who should be managing and financing these platforms?

How much is an article worth?

How much would it be fair to pay to have an article published in a journal? What factors to consider to determine a fair price?

Advantages and disadvantages of subscriptions

It is an advantage for authors to publish in subscription journals because they do not pay to publish and they have greater freedom in their choice of journal. On the other hand, it is a disadvantage for readers, who may not be able to pay to access the content they need to do research.

Advantages and disadvantages of publication fees

Paying to publish open access is an advantage for readers because the content is freely accessible. It is, however, a disadvantage for authors, who may find it difficult to pay the fees required to publish. In fact, this type of open access may reduce their chances to publish where they prefer to.

The phenomenon of double dipping

Double dipping is an unfair practice associated with hybrid journals in which the research organisation pays double to support publication by its researchers. To avoid this practice, publishers should charge less for subscription since they already receive a fee. Yet some publishers do not do this, and so for research organisations the payment is double.

Pay to publish?

In the gold open access model, the more articles are published, the higher the revenues for the publisher. This may lead to some journals accepting as many articles as possible, risking a worse quality both of the content and the peer-review process.

Publication fees and prestige

As in subscription-based journals, the open access model based on publication fees is influenced by prestige and reputation. The more prestigious a journal is, the higher the fees to be paid. Perhaps by changing the evaluation criteria, based on journal metrics, we could move towards more economically sustainable models?

Critical issues of diamond open access

A diamond open access model, where you neither pay to publish nor to read, has some critical issues:

-the journal is unstable in the long term, because the funder might stop supporting it
-there is no independence and conflicts of interest can arise having an impact on the quality of publications
-if journals get bigger, they have an increasing need for new resources from the funder.

The problems of preprints

As the Covid emergency showed, preprints are exposed to several problems:

- in the absence of peer-review there is no guarantee of quality;
there is a risk that the media and the public will distribute results of an unreliable research;
- preprints may produce an information overload difficult to navigate.

Are transformative agreements leading to open access?

It is difficult to assess whether transformative agreements between publishers and libraries will lead to full open access. Since most of them are agreements with large publishers, there is a risk that they benefit the current publishing structure with its high costs while preventing the growth of alternative initiatives.

Does the waivering of publication charges (APC) give publishers too much power?

The waivering or discount of publication fees in some countries is unilaterally handled by the publisher. Indeed, the publisher decides who can participate and the terms of the agreements, thus generating inequalities between countries. Some researchers may not be able to pay despite the discounts because the fees still remain out of their reach, while others may be excluded from the agreements.

The differences between books and open access articles

Publishing a book open access entails different challenges from publishing an article. Firstly, because the publishing process takes longer, and the cost to produce a book is higher. Currently, the transition to open access books is less supported by funding and regulations.

Personnel costs

When a publication is produced within the academic environment, has no apparent production costs, because those who work on it (lecturers, researchers, PhD students, scholarship holders) already have a salary paid by the university: these are hidden costs, so to speak. A publisher, however, relies on employees, and the cost of their wages is neither eliminable nor avoidable nor negotiable.

Preprint and research ethics

Tools such as arXiv are based on the trust of a system that is self-regulating, and guarantees the publication of articles in which authors work as best they can and cite other work on the basis of relevance and quality and not out of academic friendship. But can sound ethics of scientific production also be trusted for the future? And what about an increasingly interdisciplinary and therefore less easily verifiable science?

The importance of infrastructure

To be able to move, cars need infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Likewise, an article needs a network of services, such as software and standard protocols, to be produced and published. Who should take care of the development and maintenance of these services?

Is it possible to recognise whether a journal is predatory?

Some publishers and journals are called 'predatory' because they publish in gold open access without rigorous quality control. The lack of an agreed definition of a predatory journal may sometimes make it difficult to recognise whether a publisher is trustworthy or not.

Which publishers do researchers publish with?

Researchers around the world tend to publish their articles with a limited number of publishers. More than 75% of articles are published in the journals of around 20 publishers, but most are published with 3-4 large publishers.

Revenues and profits of the major publishers

In 2022, Elsevier reported revenues of € 2.9 billion with a profit margin of € 1.1 billion (40%). Springer-Nature reported € 1.8 billion for the same year with € 487 million profit margin (27%).

Exponential growth of publications

Since 1950, the number of publications has grown so fast it doubles every 14 years. In the last seventy years, the number of publications has increased by an average of 5% each year.

Publications and evaluation of researchers

In most European countries, researchers' careers are evaluated by the number and quality of publications, in particular considering the journal's impact factor.

Declining library budgets

Over the past decades in Europe and the United States, library budgets of research institutions have remained unaltered or have been declining. Investment in research and development, on the other hand, has increased greatly over the same period.

Effects of large investments

Large investments in digital technologies by publishers have significantly lowered the cost of producing and distributing articles. Publishing a single article in an electronic magazine costs less because the production process has been improved and made more efficient.

How much does it cost to publish an article?

According to a recent estimate, the cost to publish an article in the US and Europe ranges between $200 and $700 depending on the service offered and the number of articles produced by the journal. Included in this estimate are the costs of content acquisition process, production and dissemination/archiving of the articles.

Articles still with restricted access

A good number of articles are still only accessible by subscription. For some publishers such as Elsevier it is even more than 80% of the total number of articles published; others such as Springer-Nature are around 50%.

How much is published open access?

In the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), in 2023 there were 9.2 million articles published in open access in a total of 20,000 journals. In 2009, instead, there were only 330,000 articles published in 4,500 journals.

Differences between countries regarding open access

In China the share of open access articles is 23%, while in the US it is 14%. In Western Europe, the figures are similar, but in the next few years a number of countries could reach a 70% share of open access articles as a consequence of transformative agreements with publishers. Indonesia stands out with an 80% share of open access articles and the highest number of open access journals (2100).

Open access policies

Universities, research organisations and funding bodies, including the European Commission, are pushing hard for all scientific production to be freely accessible. As of 2023, there are more than 1100 regulations worldwide requiring researchers to upload their articles to open access repositories. Most are in Europe (64%) and North America (16%).

Open access in European projects

Anyone funded by the Horizon 2020 or subsequent EU funding programmes is required to publish open access. Any costs incurred are reimbursed through project funds only in the case of gold open access journals. However, hybrid journals are excluded from reimbursement.

Different disciplines, different attitudes

Researchers' attitudes towards open access vary greatly depending on the discipline. Natural sciences researchers value open access because it guarantees rapid and wide dissemination of content. The social sciences and humanities community, on the other hand, is more reluctant, mainly because there are fewer funds to pay for publication fees.

Who pays for open access in case of articles with multiple authors?

Corresponding authors handle communication with the journal and also pay for publication costs. They can do so by using their own research funds or those of their institute. Greater responsibility is therefore increasingly attached to the role, which more and more tends to be attributed to more than one researcher.

Agreements between publishers and libraries

Since the 1990s, large publishers have been selling bundled subscriptions of journals at a discount. Through these agreements, known as Big Deals, libraries pay less for the single journal and guarantee access to more content, while publishers may increase their revenues through reduced publication costs.

Cancellation of agreements

In recent years, rising subscription costs have led a number of libraries to cancel or renegotiate agreements made with publishers. Some institutions have therefore experienced a decrease in the content available to students and researchers.

Gold open access

This open access model entails a publication fee, called article processing charges (APC), to be paid by individual authors and covering all costs associated with publication. Fees for a single article can vary widely. Depending on the prestige of the journal and the scientific area, fees may range from $200 up to $8900.

Hybrid open access journals

Hybrid journals are subscription-based journals which give researchers the opportunity to publish open access articles for a fee (APC). The journal is a hybrid precisely because it combines the subscription and open access models, guaranteeing a dual source of income for the publisher. Fees to publish are on average around $3,500 but can be as high as $11,000 for a single article.

Researchers' perceptions of the damage of publication fees

According to a recent survey, many scientists believe that having to pay to publish open access hinders the dissemination of scientific knowledge. However, not everyone agrees that it damages them personally. Among the most critical are young researchers and those working in the field of humanities, perhaps because they have fewer resources to pay fees.

Green open access

In the green open access model, authors can make a copy of their article, published in a subscription-based journal, accessible through a repository provided by a funder or independent sponsor. Publishers often allow this practice after a period of embargo of the article that can range from a few months to more than a year. The version deposited in the archive is not always the one published in the journal.

Diamond open access

In the diamond open access model, journals do not charge for publication or access by readers. The costs are covered entirely by research institutions, consortia of several organisations or private sponsors. Most of these journals are small and often run on budgets of less than €10,000 per year.

Pre-print archives

A pre-print is a version of an article that is shared on a public server before being submitted for peer-review. Publishing pre-prints allows for rapid sharing and immediate feedback from the community. The best known platform is arXiv, a reference repository for physics, mathematics and computer science researchers. ArXiv is funded by a consortium of more than 30 research institutions.

Overlay journals

Overlay journals are open access journals that do not produce the content, but make a selection from articles available in public repositories. Publications may already be subject to peer review or be evaluated after selection.

Mega journals

A mega journal is an open access journal that, unlike traditional journals, publishes a large number of articles from different scientific areas. They are therefore interdisciplinary and less selective. Publishers state that studies are not evaluated according to how relevant they are to a specific area but only for their scientific rigour. Articles are peer-reviewed and payment is made through APCs.

Transformative agreements

To facilitate the transition to full open access, transformative agreements have been made between publishers and public funders since 2015. These agreements ensure that public funds, previously allocated for subscriptions, are instead given to publishers to support open access publications. As of 2023, 500 agreements have been signed in 30 countries for a total of around 900,000 published articles.

Initiatives for low-income countries

Some publishers offer discounts to researchers from low-income countries or waive their publication fees. This should allow for greater accessibility to scientific debate. Recently, for example, Cambridge University Press has allowed researchers from 107 countries to publish in its journals free of charge.

The Plan S proposal

The Plan S initiative called for all publicly funded research to be available open access from 2021. The proposal was very ambitious but did not reach the desired goals. The Plan S group, still active today, is supported by major European and international funders, such as the European Commission and the World Health Organisation (WHO).