KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Free-to-publish, free-to-read diamond OA may improve equity in publication opportunities, but uptake may be held back as authors are attracted to non-diamond journals with an established reputation.
• Questions remain around whether diamond OA will reduce the costs of publishing overall.

Open access (OA) is key to making research more accessible, with gold OA ever-growing: it accounted for 42% of Web of Science-indexed publications in 2023. In a recent article in Research Professional News, published by Clarivate, Ulrich Herb and Benedikt Schmal highlight that gold OA is no stranger to scrutiny. Article processing charges (APCs) can pose equity issues, and transformative agreements have not shifted the OA landscape as hoped. Diamond OA, providing both free-to-publish and free-to-read articles, has been hailed as a solution by funders, libraries, and OA advocates; however, it may not provide a complete fix.

Money, money, money

Herb and Schmal debate whether, on balance, diamond OA will lower the costs of publishing compared with the current landscape. They note that journals have many costs, including:

• managing peer review, editing, and quality control
• operational infrastructure
• indexing and archiving
• training and capacity building
• marketing and outreach.

Despite this long list, Herb and Schmal suggest that many assume large commercial publishers and non-profit outfits have the same costs. Think again. Diamond OA publishers are unlikely to replicate economies of scale at larger publishers, so face higher costs. By their nature, non-profit publishers also lack motivations to reduce costs to widen profit margins.

Is reputation everything?

Diamond OA levels the financial playing field for authors, but Herb and Schmal ask whether this will truly provide equity. With reputation often a key factor in journal selection, the authors question whether there is sufficient appetite for new diamond OA journals: these would need to compete with established rivals to build their reputation and gain broader appeal.

Diamond OA levels the financial playing field for authors, but Herb and Schmal ask whether this will truly provide equity.

Herb and Schmal push for a pragmatic assessment of diamond OA models to establish their viability and sustainability – or note that OA advocates once again risk disappointment.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• English-language dominance persists in academic publishing; addressing such biases is crucial for creating an equitable global scholarly landscape.
• New practical tools and guidance from DIAMAS aim to help foster a more inclusive approach.

English-language dominance in academic publishing is increasingly recognised as a significant barrier to non-native English speakers, and one which requires stakeholders throughout academic publishing to take practical steps to address it.

Survey

As recently reported by Lynne Bowker and colleagues on the LSE Impact Blog, a European survey of 685 institutional publishers, conducted by DIAMAS (Developing Institutional open Access publishing Models to Advance Scholarly communication), found that 54% of institutional publishers do not implement specific measures to support equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB). Only around 30% had begun to implement measures to address linguistic bias.

As the blog authors highlight, this is in contrast to the important role that publishers have to play in addressing EDIB in academic publishing and underscores the need for comprehensive action.

54% of institutional publishers do not implement specific measures to support equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB).

A snowball effect

The authors explain how English-language dominance has inadvertently privileged native speakers within academic research and publishing. This extends beyond just authorship, to peer reviewers and editorial boards, thus ultimately influencing the global research agenda. In this environment, authors from non-English-speaking backgrounds are likely to have fewer opportunities to publish, creating a cycle of disadvantage that can affect their academic careers.

Gender bias further exacerbates these disparities, with women underrepresented as lead authors, peer reviewers, and editorial board members. Biases are often intersectional, affecting individuals with multiple marginalised identities even more.

Practical solutions and future directions

To help address these issues, DIAMAS is incorporating EDIB as a core component in its new standard for diamond open access. As part of the initiative, DIAMAS will make a range of practical resources freely available, including:

• Toolsuites: 500-word summaries, accompanied by tools such as glossaries and frequently asked questions
• Guidelines: practical resources for each key stakeholder in academic publishing.

It is hoped that, by using these tools, scholarly publishers and institutions can take meaningful steps towards creating a more equitable and inclusive academic landscape.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• In a recently published review of Plan S, cOAlitions S describe key initiatives that aim to meet the changing needs of the evolving open access landscape.
• New features of the practical ‘Journal Checker Tool’ were discussed, as well as the latest advancements towards diamond open access.

2023 marked the 5th anniversary of the launch of Plan S by cOAlition S, a group of mainly European research funders with a mission to achieve “full and immediate open access (OA) to research publications”. Although much progress has been made, the group recognise that there is still work to do, with a substantial proportion of new research articles sitting behind paywalls. In February 2024, the latest review of Plan S was released, with a rundown of new and ongoing plans that aim to turn the dial further forwards full OA.

The state of open access

OA rates for research funded by cOAlition S members remained high (~80%), particularly compared with the global average (60%). Gold OA was most widely used among cOAlition S member-funded research, along with an increasing number of OA publications made available via ‘hybrid’ journals. It was suggested that this increase was likely due to transformative agreements, and that this number may fall following the decision by cOAlition S to halt financial support for these agreements after 2024.

Strategic initiatives

The review detailed 4 key initiatives that will have an impact over the course of the next year:

• A study to assess the impact of Plan S was launched, which aims to evaluate how Plan S has contributed to OA and its global effects on the scholarly landscape.
• A public consultation is ongoing to further develop the “Towards Responsible Publishing” proposal, which aims to move to systems where authors control how their work is shared.
• The organisation Information Power was commissioned by cOAlition S to devise a proposal for a fairer pricing system for publishing. A working group was also convened in partnership with PLOS and Jisc to create a framework to move away from article processing charges.
• Support for diamond OA, which cOAlition S “see as the most equitable OA publishing model on the planet”, continued, and a framework for a Global Diamond Federation was outlined.

Useful tools

As well as new proposals, the report reviewed practical tools already made available to researchers, including:

• the Journal Comparison Service, which allows comparison of journal publishing services and fees
• the Journal Checker Tool, which is used to identify Plan S compliant routes to publishing OA. New features of this tool mean that users are also now able to check if a transformative agreement is in place for a particular journal or institution.

Future perspectives

Executive Director of cOAlition S, Johan Rooryck, highlighted that these initiatives look “forward to a bold vision for the future of scholarly communication”. Indeed, updates on many of the latest initiatives, such as the Plan S impact study, are expected in the coming months. It will be interesting to see how these new developments impact on OA research in 2024 and beyond.

Executive Director of cOAlition S, Johan Rooryck, highlighted that these initiatives look “forward to a bold vision for the future of scholarly communication”.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Illegal ‘pirate libraries’, such as Sci-Hub, controversially provide access to journal articles that are otherwise restricted behind a paywall.
• Open access journals themselves may be the unintended victims of this phenomenon, due to the negative impact this unrestricted access has on the open access citation advantage.

While ‘pirate libraries’ such as Sci-Hub seek to challenge and disrupt the traditional academic publishing model, a recent article by Abdelghani Maddi suggests that the site may be inadvertently “perpetuating the current publishing system”.

Maddi and his colleague, David Sapinho, studied the impact of Sci-Hub on the citation of research papers. They calculated ‘citation scores’ for millions of articles from open access, non-open access, and hybrid journals. Critically, they also examined citations of non-open access articles that are available on Sci-Hub, versus those not available via the illegal platform.

Maddi and Sapinho found that Sci-Hub effectively erased the so-called ‘open access citation advantage’, whereby papers published in open access journals are more likely to be cited than those in non-open access journals (due to the accessibility of the full paper). They argue therefore that, in contrast to their stated aims, pirate sites such as Sci-Hub may actually hinder the progress of open access publishing. For instance, due to the perceived kudos of publishing in certain journals, authors may do so even if the journal is not open access, knowing that their work will ultimately be made freely available via illegal pirate sites, and thus cited by fellow researchers. Maddi and Sapinho propose that the victims of pirate platforms are, ultimately, open access journals themselves.

“Although their goal is to promote open access, these types of libraries unwittingly work against the open access movement.”

To overcome this ‘paradox’, Maddi calls on the scientific community, publishers, and policymakers to work together to develop community-led models, such as diamond open access, that provide sustainable and equitable access to research.

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KEY TAKEAWAY

• To address EU Council calls for reforms to a flawed scholarly publishing model, a community-governed scholarly information infrastructure based on open standards should be implemented.

On the 23 May 2023 the Council of the EU released a statement encouraging the European Commission and member states to back policies that will facilitate a scholarly publishing model that was “not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with no costs for authors or readers”. This call for transparent, equitable and open access to scholarly publications was supported by a joint response from 10 key representative organisations of the public research and innovation sector who highlighted several initiatives currently supporting this aim, including Science Europe’s Action Plan for Diamond Open Access.

This need for reform was discussed in detail in an article by Prof Björn Brembs and colleagues in Royal Society Open Science. The authors argue that it is time to replace traditional, outdated academic journals and end the workflow monopoly of publishing corporations. They describe a vicious cycle of 3 crises – replicability, affordability, and functionality – that contribute to the current dysfunctional system, whereby rising journal costs hinder institutions in being able to address functionality issues, which in turn fuels the replicability crisis as research data become harder to discover, access, re-use and scrutinise.

To break this cycle, the authors propose a transformative shift, replacing traditional journals with a modern, decentralised, open and robust, community-governed scholarly information network grounded in open standards. This network would encompass all facets of scholarly work, including text, data, and code, with interchangeable service providers competing within a well-regulated market. Effective governance, modelled after bodies such as The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) would oversee the establishment of open standards and prevent corporate dominance.

“The time is ripe to replace traditional and outdated academic journals with an open, interoperable and community-governed modern scholarly information infrastructure.”

While the idea of replacing traditional journals is not a new one, the authors of the article provide insights into the practical implementation of an open and fairer replacement – a move that is garnering an increasing amount of support.

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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

• Diamond open access is a crucial facet of academic communication, but its implementation remains challenging.
• An action plan, focusing on efficiency, quality standards, capacity building, and sustainability, has been developed to further refine diamond open access.

Diamond open access (OA) is a scholarly publishing model with no fees for authors or readers. Although it is estimated that almost a tenth of academic articles are published using this practice, diamond OA is held back by certain challenges. To address these limitations, an Action Plan for Diamond Open Access has been prepared, and is currently undergoing endorsement, as described in a March article from cOAlition S.

The OA Diamond Journals Study, commissioned by cOAlition S, identified limitations associated with the technical capacity, management, visibility, and sustainability of diamond OA journals and platforms, and proposed a series of recommendations. Based on these recommendations, Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR) have prepared an action plan focusing on:

• efficiency
• quality standards
• capacity building
• sustainability.

Each of these central elements was reviewed and discussed by participants of the February 2022 workshop on Diamond Open Access and experts of the Science Europe’s Working Group on Open Science; a summary of the action plan was presented at the Open Science European Conference 2022.

To date, over 110 organisations have endorsed the initiative.

“Endorsing the Diamond Action Plan is a sign of commitment to work together towards a scholarly publishing model that is equitable, community-driven, and academic-led and -owned. The Action Plan provides a set of priority actions to further develop and expand a sustainable, community-driven Diamond scholarly communication ecosystem.” – Marc Schiltz, President of Science Europe

Strategies to operationalise the action plan, including the Horizon Europe’s DIAMAS project (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication), will be discussed at the upcoming  Diamond Open Access Conference in September 2022.

The authors hope that the action plan will increase bibliodiversity and, ultimately, “enable the global research community to take charge of a scholarly communication system by and for research communities”.

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