KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Plan S architects cOAlition S have released the results of a global consultation on their latest open access proposal, “Towards Responsible Publishing”.
• Broad support exists for preprint posting, permissive licensing, and open peer review, while challenges remain around incentives, infrastructure, and implementation.

Earlier this year, cOAlition S welcomed the findings of a consultation with global stakeholders on their “Towards Responsible Publishing” (TRP) proposal. A detailed report reveals broad support for aspects such as preprint posting, the use of permissive licences, and open peer review, yet challenges remain.  

The proposal

Originally published last year, TRP builds on the principles of Plan S, which calls for the academic community to move towards “full and immediate” open access. cOAlition S proposes to reform academic publishing away from “highly inequitable” funding models, such as subscription charges and (over time) article processing charges (APCs), towards a scholar-led publishing ecosystem. These principles are aimed at allowing authors to decide when and what to publish.

The consultation

Over 11,600 respondents contributed to the consultation, including:

• 440 responses to an initial stakeholder feedback survey
• 72 focus group participants
• 11,145 responses to an online global researcher survey.

The report acknowledges that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were underrepresented in the initial stakeholder feedback survey data. To mitigate this, the report authors solicited 10 organisational feedback letters from LMICs.

Key findings

There was general support across regions and academic disciplines for:

• preprint posting, to increase research transparency
• permissive licensing, albeit with some concerns that open licence adoption is imposed by funders rather than the academic community
• open peer review (where reports are published alongside a published article), with a preference for reviewer anonymity.

Despite this support, the traditional journal ecosystem remains dominant, with researchers reliant on journal indexes and impact factors when deciding where to publish. The report suggests that researchers in LMICs may be more dependent on these metrics currently. Along with inequities in relation to APCs, this could lead to TRP being seen as an imposition by wealthier nations.

There was general support across regions and academic disciplines for preprint posting, permissive licensing, and open peer review.

The way forward

The report suggests that cOAlition S should pursue a phased approach to implementing TRP goals:

• Short term: encourage preprint posting and open licensing
• Medium term: promote open peer review
• Long term: reform incentives at a global scale to encourage open access publishing, and reallocate resources from legacy funding models towards scholar-led publishing infrastructure

cOAlition S aim to publish a full response to the findings by the end of 2024.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• OA publishing can place financial stress on authors, but avenues like publisher discounts can offset costs and improve equity.
• Immediate OA mandates for US federally funded research challenge publishing models and author’s control over their work.

Debate continues following the 2022 White House directive mandating immediate open access (OA) for all US federally funded research by the end of 2025. While OA publication has many virtues, including improving access to research and citation diversity, some issues are far from resolved.

Are OA fees prohibitive for authors?

Challenges for OA publication include inequitable opportunities and inconsistent benefits to visibility in the scientific space. In a recent Career Feature article in Nature, Nikki Forrester builds on reports of prohibitive article processing charges, particularly for authors in low- and middle-income countries. Forrester shares advice on offsetting OA costs from experienced researchers, such as:

• seeking support from co-authors, funders, or institutions
• taking advantage of scientific society grants (eg, in partnership with Research4Life)
• utilising publisher fee waivers and discounts, where available.

How will OA mandates affect publishers?

Scientific publishing models rely on payment from authors and subscriptions, and are threatened by immediate OA, notes Kathryn Palmer for Inside Higher Ed: the 2022 directive will require embargo-free deposition of publications in designated, publicly accessible repositories.

Further, some libraries have pushed for use of the federal purpose licence for federally funded work—allowing free publication and reproduction—to simplify processes for authors. US Congress and publishing associations are concerned this move would limit authors’ control, with broad OA licences permitting reproduction, modification, and commercialisation. Given the federal purpose licence is non-exclusive, author and library bodies have rebuffed some copyright-related concerns, simply seeing a “business model conflict” for publishers who held exclusive copyright for articles published under subscription models.

Given the federal purpose licence is non-exclusive, author and library bodies have rebuffed some copyright-related concerns, simply seeing a “business model conflict” for publishers.

In any case, Palmer notes that publishers will face difficult decisions as the OA landscape continues to shift.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Researchers in less affluent countries report challenges getting APC discounts or waivers, posing barriers to OA publication.
• Tiered pricing and alternative funding models have been suggested to improve global equity in access to OA publication.

As scientific publishing shifts to open access (OA) models, authors—particularly in less affluent countries—face challenges paying article processing charges (APCs). A recent news feature in Science by Jeffrey Brainard highlights growing concerns about equity in OA.

Free to read, not free to publish

With ~50% of scientific papers now published under author-pays OA, 2023 saw gold and hybrid OA revenue triple for 6 large publishers versus 2019. This excludes potential reductions from discounts and waivers, relied on by many authors from low- and lower middle-income countries to publish OA. However, processes to obtain discounts or waivers can be complex, and they may not be offered by hybrid journals (who offer free, but paywalled, publication).

APCs can put financial strain on researchers worldwide when grant funding does not cover the fees: some even resort to paying from their own pocket. Brainard notes that when considering journal options likely to aid career advancement, authors in developed countries often prioritise journal reputation—one factor linked to higher APCs—over APC affordability. However, this may not be an option for scientists in developing regions. In the words of one researcher from Brazil, unaffordable APCs risk science from the Global South becoming “nonexistent”, perpetuating global disparities.

Unaffordable APCs risk science from the Global South becoming “nonexistent”, perpetuating global disparities.

Proposed solutions

Making journal articles both free to read and affordable to publish is challenging, but publishers are exploring alternatives to author-paid APCs. Potential solutions include:

• transformative agreements with institutions, allowing affiliated researchers to publish without paying APCs (and access paywalled content)
• tiered pricing based on a country’s wealth and purchasing power. While this would reduce APCs for many countries, costs would increase in wealthier nations if publishers offset lost revenue
• diamond OA, with government or philanthropic funding eliminating individual APCs. Brainard notes this has boosted OA publishing in some regions already, but absent impact factors for many journals can reduce the appeal.

Brainard highlights that OA publishing is actively changing: cOAlition S, Elsevier, and Springer Nature have introduced tiered pricing initiatives this year. We look forward to seeing how the OA landscape continues to evolve.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Delta Think has identified a “small” but “significant” drop in the percentage of open access articles published in 2023, following an 8-year period of sustained growth.
• Delta Think suggest this loss in open access market share could reflect authors moving away from fully open access publishers, given perceived quality issues in a subset of journals.

Hot on the heels of our recent article on the real-terms cost of article processing charges, we look at another report from Delta Think: open access (OA) market share has dropped for the first time since 2016.

According to preliminary results from Delta Think’s 2024 publisher survey, the volume of publications has been rising since 2016, with high OA growth rates dominating the market up to 2023. Following a “post-COVID spike”, growth has now slowed back down to long-term trends, with OA losing market share.  

2023 saw a “small” but “significant” loss in OA market share

Despite previously predicting that OA articles would make up over half the monetisable scholarly output by 2023, Delta Think found that between 2022 and 2023:

• total article output grew by 3.4%
• OA article output grew by 2.1%
• OA’s output share fell from 49% to 48%.

The decrease is a small but notable shift from the long-term trend of incremental gains in OA market share each year. For the first time, OA output is not growing as quickly as total scholarly output, representing “a reversal of long-term observations”.

For the first time, OA output is not growing as quickly as total scholarly output.

Why has OA lost market share?

Delta Think suggest that alongside a post-COVID return to long-term trends, underlying challenges experienced by OA publishers could be to blame. Authors’ concerns about quality due to paper mills, the rise of special editions, and removal of impact factors may have contributed to a shift away from fully OA publishers, despite these issues affecting only a minority of journals. Uncertainty around funder OA mandates may have also played a role.

Will OA bounce back?

Delta Think caution that it is too early to say, but expect OA growth may pick up again in 2024, at slightly lower levels than in recent years. They note that fully OA publishers still represent a fifth of the market’s output, with well-established hybrid publishers continuing to see growth in OA. Given the benefits of OA, we look forward to seeing whether OA uptake bounces back in 2024.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A review of the open access policy for publications is underway in Canada, aiming to ensure that all Tri-Agency–funded publications are freely available upon publication.
• Secondary publishing rights could play a crucial role in ensuring public access to academic research.

Canada’s federal research granting agencies have announced a review of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, aiming to fully embrace open access by 2025, Brianne Selman and Mark Swartz report for The Conversation UK. This planned update to the Copyright Act would require that agency-funded journal articles are made freely available upon publication, without the current 12-month embargo period.

Immediate open access could be achieved by adopting secondary publishing rights. This would enable researchers to share their findings on institutional repositories, personal websites, or other platforms, regardless of institutional affiliations, subscription fees, or the payment of article processing charges of open access journals.

Immediate open access could be achieved by adopting secondary publishing rights. This would enable researchers to share their findings on institutional repositories, personal websites, or other platforms, regardless of institutional affiliations, subscription fees, or the payment of article processing charges of open access journals.

cOAlition S, a group of national research funding organisations, has already agreed to ensure that all publications resulting from their research grants are made fully open access at the time of publication. This policy is known as Plan S, which outlines 10 key principles for open access. The first of these principles is that “authors or their institutions retain copyright to their publications”.

In the interconnected world of research, collaboration is key. The move to open access will encourage collaboration by empowering researchers to share their work openly, ensuring a wider reach globally, and promoting the free flow of knowledge. This will foster innovation and accelerate the pace of discovery. As funding agencies around the world consider a similar approach, the academic landscape is poised for a revolution.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• From the end of 2025, US government policy will mandate immediate open access to federally funded research data and publications, eliminating the current 12-month embargo.
• While further details on implementation are worked out, publishers, funders, and researchers grapple with the best ways to fund open access.

A year ago, the US White House announced plans to make all federally funded research immediately available for free by the end of 2025. So, what progress has been made, and what will this model mean for the status quo in medical publishing?

The mandate from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) instructed all federal agencies to implement plans to “deliver transparent, open, secure, and free communication of federally funded research and activities”. Under the new directive, publications must be made instantly available to the public, removing the current optional 12-month grace period. In line with a similar mandate from the WHO, the directive also applies to research data.

The mandate from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) instructed all federal agencies to implement plans to “deliver transparent, open, secure, and free communication of federally funded research and activities”.

The OSTP left it to federal funding agencies to work out the finer details of implementation, which led to a flurry of debate on the policy’s potential impact and how best to enact it. Publishers raised concerns around what they viewed as a lack of consultation and financial sustainability, while the US government pointed to the success of Plan S in Europe, as well as the rapid open access to research seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What will this mean for medical publishing?

In an economic assessment report, the OSTP predicted that the policy would lead to changes in publishers’ business models. The move to immediate open access will inevitably make journal subscription models less desirable, and publishers’ incomes will likely become more reliant on the article processing fees levied on open access publications. As reported by Susan d’Agostino of Inside Higher Ed, this raises the question of who will bear these costs. The OSTP allows researchers to “include reasonable publication costs” in their budgets, but some researchers point out that budget squeezes may follow, with open access fees impacting on funds available for other aspects of research.

Following the policy launch, the OSTP held a Year of Open Science, with federal funding agencies obliged to submit initial updated public access plans over the course of 2023. Large funders, such as the National Institutes of Health, have already done so. The year also incorporated 4 ‘listening sessions’ with early-career researchers. These researchers advocated for a broader range of initiatives to ensure:

• equitable access to open access publishing
• incentives for open science, rather than the current ‘publish or perish’ environment
• better use of alternative avenues for early research dissemination, such as preprints.

Meanwhile, some publishers and other bodies advocate for alternative models, such as:

• immediate green open access
• diamond open access (already popular in some regions of the world).

So, what’s next?

Questions remain for publishers, and the road to more fully open access models can be rocky. While the European Plan S initiative is much more advanced, having been in effect since 2021, cOAlition S recently announced that a number of hybrid journals will be dropped from its funded transformation programme, because they failed to make quick enough progress towards full open access. In the case of the US policy, an analysis by Eric Schares found that 265,000 articles a year could be affected, and that some publishers would be impacted more than others.

As work continues through to 2026, we watch with interest to see how the publishing ecosystem will adapt to this change in the landscape.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Article processing charges are popular in the Global North but threaten potentially more sustainable open access models already embraced in Latin America.
• Global support of institutional open access publishing is needed to build an open, non-commercial infrastructure to share research.

Article processing charges (APC) have become increasingly popular across the Global North since the mid-2000s, yet APCs threaten to undermine the open access (OA) ecosystem and only promote published material from well-resourced research fields and communities.

Institutionally funded OA – an alternative ‘diamond’ OA model that excludes fees for readers and authors – is popular in Latin America but is under threat due to the preferences of research evaluation systems and Latin American scholars for international journals (that tend to charge APCs) and their associated prestige. Latin American institutions are resultingly being forced to redirect funds for diamond OA investment towards paying APCs.

Publishers are incentivised to charge APCs due to the proliferation of research funds that are made available to pay them – “APCs beget APCs.”

A recent Nature article highlights this issue, drawing attention to the vicious circle whereby publishers are incentivised to charge APCs due to the proliferation of research funds that are made available to pay them – “APCs beget APCs.” Dr Juan Pablo Alperin, the article’s author, highlights the intrinsic link between APCs and those that can afford to pay them. Dr Alperin, co-scientific director of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP)  at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, discusses the importance of making research publicly available and lobbies for global OA funding mechanisms that protect publishing diversity, lower the burdens of production, and raise the quality of journals.

To further this cause, PKP has developed free software, Open Journal Systems, to manage, publish and index scholarly works. The software is used by a diverse set of journals and has provided access to many academics as well as non-academics on locally relevant literature.

Global support of institutional OA publishing is growing but more support is needed to build an open, non-commercial infrastructure to share research. Whilst Dr Alperin recognises the model relies on volunteers and institutional staff to provide editorial and technical support, he calls on governments, funders, and academic institutions to embrace diamond OA and stop supporting APCs.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• US guidance mandates that, from 2025, all publicly funded research is open access from the time of publication.
• The publishers of Science highlight the importance of equitable access for both readers and authors, and propose immediate green open access as one of the potential solutions.

In recent years, Europe has seen Plan S accelerate open access to publicly funded research. Now, guidance from The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy mandates that, by 2025, all publicly funded research in the US must be open access at the time of publication. As publishers consider how best to meet this requirement, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publishers of Science, have proposed one solution and called on others to join the discussion.

In a recent editorial, AAAS set out some of the key challenges faced by publishers as they seek to “balance the tensions between equitable access for readers and equitable access to publishing”. In other words, how can publishers ensure readers have open access to articles while ensuring researchers can equitably obtain open access publication? The authors highlighted that while the current commonly employed open access model, based on payment of article processing charges, ensures open access for readers, it can result in a system skewed to well-funded senior researchers (who are often white males).

While one of Science’s journals operates under this gold open access model, the publisher plans to use immediate green open access as a tool to meet the US mandate for its remaining, currently subscription-only journals, as outlined in a recent Nature news article. Authors of publicly funded research accepted by these journals are now able to utilise the ‘green open access-zero day’ policy, posting their peer reviewed, author accepted manuscript in a public repository without additional journal fees. AAAS has invited further discussion within the research and publishing communities to refine approaches to open access, stating: “We must not sew more structural inequity into the very fabric of the enterprise we seek to improve.”

AAAS has invited further discussion…to refine approaches to open access, stating: “We must not sew more structural inequity into the very fabric of the enterprise we seek to improve.”

To this end, Science correspondents have begun to share their thoughts and proposals, including suggestions for international standards for article processing charges and open access publication and to designate articles as open access only after a publication decision is reached. Both strategies are aimed at ensuring publication quality is protected over volume.

The ongoing discussions illustrate that providing an open access publishing system that is equitable, fair, and inclusive remains challenging. As outlined by AAAS, such a challenge requires publishers to work together with governments, funding bodies, and the wider scientific community to find a mutually agreeable way forward.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sarah Chaytor presents a framework for strengthening evidence-based policy generation.
• Key elements of the framework are cross-functional collaboration, fostering relationships, and making research outputs clear and accessible.

In August 2022, following a roundtable discussion hosted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Taylor and Francis, Sarah Chaytor (Director of Research Strategy & Policy at University College London) developed a framework for improving the relationships between research institutions and public policymakers. This framework, dubbed the ‘Five Cs’, acknowledges the current limitations of open access.

Capabilities

This first ‘C’ deals with how to effectively communicate, access, and understand research, and includes translation capabilities (to make academic research understandable for lay audiences) and curational capabilities (to make research outputs easy to find and navigate for users). Chaytor also highlighted relational capabilities, which are a key element in supporting research use.

Connections

Chaytor discussed the role of relational capabilities in more detail in the second ‘C’ and stressed the importance of investing in building sustainable, long-term relationships to ensure successful academic-policy engagement.

Coordination

Long-term relationships can help to foster coordinated research efforts. Chayton noted that literature reviews are highly valued by policy users for providing accessible evidence summaries, but tend to be undervalued by funders and publishers. In the future, it will be important to find ways to encourage timely research synthesis as part of academic outputs.

Collaboration

While the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches to policy issues, Chaytor believes that collaboration should be between organisations as well as between disciplines. An illustrative example of institutional collaboration is the Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) – a community of UK universities that aims to increase the impact of research on policy and offers a collective response to requests for evidence from policymakers.

“Supporting sustained collaboration between academic, policy, and other communities is essential to drive evidence use” – Sarah Chaytor

Co-production

The final ‘C’ focuses on the effective co-production of evidence between the academic and policy communities. Chayton suggested a ‘quadruple helix’ approach to co-production, which would also include businesses and civil society.

We hope to see the elements in this framework being implemented to facilitate evidence use and better support evidence-informed policymaking.

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Earlier this year, the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) online conference took place, focusing on the theme ‘Designing 21st Century Knowledge Sharing Systems’. Recordings for all of the sessions are freely available and can be viewed here.

There was a wide range of presentations, including:

• Knowledge production and health equity
• Open infrastructure and collaboration
• Science journalism, preprints, and COVID-19: Some lessons
• OA policies and mandates: lessons learnt from global cases
• What is the role of a publisher?

If you missed the conference, why not catch up on these topics and more?

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