Changing the publishing landscape towards openness – supporting hybrid Open Access at the University of Bergen

Traditionally, there have been two important media of academic publishing: scholarly journals and scholarly books. The first scholarly journal, the Journal des Sçavans, was founded by Denis de Sallo, appeared already in January 1665 in Paris, reappeared after the French Revolution as the Journal des Savants, and still exists as a leading journal in the humanities. Only a few weeks later, Henry Oldenbourg, the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, established a second scholarly journal, the Philosophical Transactions, with a focus on science. The purpose of these journals was to formalize the extensive correspondence between philosophers and scientists.1 In the 18th and the 19th century, more specialized journals gained in importance, most of which were published by learned societies. At the end of the 19th century, university presses too began to publish scholarly journals. Another traditional means of academic publishing are the various types of scholarly books, in particular monographs, edited volumes, reference works (specialist dictionaries, encyclopedias, and specialty reference manuals), and technical handbooks.2 A narrow definition of academic works would exclude textbooks and books for the broader public. Shavell (2010, 337–39) employs four criteria to determine whether a journal or book is academic in nature: (1) the authors and/or the publisher are usually academics; (2) the readers are mainly academics; (3) the content is academic in character; (4) only low royalties are paid, if any. As of today, scholarly journals are the preferred mode of academic publishing in particular in the sciences and some social sciences (e.g., economics), whereas scholarly books still play an important role in the arts, the humanities, and part of the social sciences. Whereas scholarly books are published by a large number of small national publishers in a multitude of languages, the most important scholarly journals are typically in English language and published by a few large commercial publishers. Until the mid-20th century, the most important journals were published by learned societies, before commercial publishers began to enter the academic publishing market in the 1960s and 1970s by launching new titles or acquiring existing ones. This development has led to a significant concentration of (commercial) publishers in the academic journal market.3 It is difficult to say for sure how many scholarly journals are available around the world. Some sources speak of more than 100,000, others of 87,000 or 73,000.4 In August 2018, Ulrich's Web Directory listed 33,119 active scholarly peer-reviewed English-language journals with about 3 million articles a year, complemented by an additional 9,372 journals in other languages. As an important subset, 11,655 journals with 2.2 million articles were included in the Clarivate Analytics' Journal Citation Reports (STM, 2018, 25–26). The Web of Science (WoS) database counted almost 12,500 journals in 2019 (see below, Section 2.2.1). With the mass expansion of academic education and the increasing size of faculty after World War II, publications in peer-reviewed, highly ranked journals have become an important precondition for academic careers in many disciplines, in particular in the sciences, economics, and partly in the other social sciences. In 1964, Eugene Garfield launched the Science Citation Index to calculate the impact factors of journals in science, medicine, and technology. This index was later followed by the Social Sciences Citation Index in 1973, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index in 1978 (Regazzi, 2015, 86–88), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index in 2015. These indices led to the development of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a metric that serves to rank a scholarly journal based on the number of citations to articles in that journal by articles in other indexed journals within a certain time period. During the same time, commercial publishers have increased their market shares to the detriment of non-for-profit publishers, such as learned societies and universities, becoming the dominant players in the market for scholarly journals. Today, the "big five" commercial academic publishers—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Sage—cover more than half of the market for scholarly journals. Since the 1980s, we have seen a sharp increase not just in the number of journals but in particular also in journal subscription prices, forcing many academic libraries to cancel serials subscriptions and to cut back on new monographs (the so-called serials crisis, cf. Eger & Scheufen, 2018, 23–29). These developments induced an increasing number of scholars, initially in the United States, to promote open access (OA) to scholarly articles as a replacement of or an addendum to the subscription model. After some individual initiatives in the late 1980s, the early 2000s saw the emergence of a global movement by scholars, librarians, and research sponsors, resulting in the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (February 2002), the "Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing" (June 2003) and the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" (October 2003).7 Two roads to OA can be distinguished8: First, gold OA refers to electronic journals with OA for all readers, often based on creative commons licenses. The publishers' costs are covered not by subscription fees but from other sources, such as article-processing charges (APCs)9 paid by authors, libraries, learned societies, or research sponsors, or subsidies from learned societies and other sources. Hybrid OA journals, whose numbers are rising fast, allow the authors to choose between paying an APC, thereby granting the reader OA, or not paying an APC and requiring the reader to pay for access to the article.10 A special branch of gold OA is mega-journals, the first one of which, PLOS One, was first published in 2006. In these journals, the peer review is restricted to examining only the soundness of the submitted articles but not their broader interest or impact. Also, mega-journals are not oriented towards a specific subject matter. The second road, green OA, refers to authors self-archiving pre-prints or post-prints of their papers on so-called OA repositories, potentially in addition to publication in traditional subscription-based journals. OpenDOAR listed 5,713 repositories in July 2021, of which 5,073 were classified as institutional repositories managed by universities, faculties, or other academic institutions, 364 as disciplinary (subject) repositories which aggregate research papers in specific disciplines (e.g., PubMed Central, arXiv, SSRN, and RepEc), 138 as aggregating repositories (including Academia and Scielo), and 139 as governmental repositories.11 Whereas institutional and disciplinary repositories generally respect the authors' or publishers' copyright, so-called Robin Hood or Pirate OA repositories do not. The most prominent example is Sci-Hub, founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a young scholar from Kazakhstan, which made over 60 million journal articles publicly available. Due to complaints by academic publishers, Sci-Hub had to switch domains several times.12 Recent years have seen the emergence of academic social networks such as Research Gate and Mendeley, as well as a stream of new forms of disseminating scientific content, including blogs, podcasts, and Facebook posts by prominent scholars. Regarding OA books, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in June 2021 listed 43,036 academic peer-reviewed books from 621 publishers.13 The number of academic journals, as listed in the WoS database, has been growing steadily over the past two decades, from around 5,000 in 2000 to almost 12,500 in 2019 (Figure 1).14 Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) The academic journal market is dominated by a few large commercial publishers, with the "big five" accounting for more than half of the academic journals listed by the WoS in 2019: Elsevier (1,754 journals), Springer (1,406), Wiley Blackwell (1,242), Taylor & Francis (1,199), and Sage (642).15 However, due to a downturn by Elsevier that began around 2006, this dominance has declined from around 60% in 2000 to around 51.7% in 2019 (Figure 2). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) Coupled with the advent of the internet and the concurrent increasing digitization of academic works, which through the bundling of different journals and/or formats ("big deals") facilitated second-degree price discrimination, this dominance has led to a drastic increase in subscription prices since the early 1990s (Bergstrom, 2013; Eger & Scheufen, 2018; Ramello, 2010). The resulting serials crisis—with academic libraries having to cut their journal portfolio—gave rise to a new publishing regime that offers OA to journal content. The share of pure (i.e., non-hybrid) OA journals as listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (2021) has been increasing steadily, from around 3% of all WoS-listed journals in 2000 to more than 10% in 2019 (Figure 3). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) Interestingly, pure OA journals also gained ground in terms of quality. Figure 4 shows boxplots of the impact factors16 of closed access (CA) versus OA journals over time. While CA journals enjoyed an impact factor advantage over OA journals for a long time—all location scales of the impact factor for CA journals being above the ones for OA journals—OA journals are nowadays of the same quality, notwithstanding considerable differences between disciplines (see the contribution by Eger et al. to this issue). In 2019, impact factor distributions of both OA and CA journals are at the same level. Thus, advancing both in quantity and in quality, OA journals are becoming ever more relevant. The literature has identified the following advantages of an OA regime for academic works: (1) OA publications are likely read and therefore (2) cited more widely,17 which in turn (3) raises the incentives for academic authors to publish their research results as citations increase their reputation. These observations led to a broad discussion in academia as to whether the copyright regime may impede the evolution towards a universal OA regime, with very different conclusions being drawn regarding the impact of OA from a social welfare perspective (Scheufen, 2015; Shavell, 2010). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) The growing relevance of academic OA publishing warrants a closer look at the development of pure OA journals as the gold road towards OA. Figure 5 shows the number of newly launched OA journals from 2002 to 2020. Following relatively slow growth from 2002 to 2014, with fewer than 500 new OA journals per year (except 2013), the number has exceeded 1,000 in every year since, peaking in 2017, when more than 2,000 new OA journals were added to the DOAJ database. Today, the DOAJ database counts more than 16,000 OA journals in many different fields of research, published in 80 languages by publishers from 126 countries.18 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Notwithstanding this impressive development, the relevance of OA journals varies substantially across academic disciplines (Figure 6).19 The research field with the largest attributed number of OA journals is Social Sciences (3,817), followed by Health Sciences (2,785), Technology and Engineering (1,416), and Language and Literature (1,153). By contrast, the natural science fields of Mathematics & Statistics (341), Physics & Astronomy (274), and Chemistry (181) feature only few OA journals.20 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Remarkable differences also exist regarding a variety of OA journal characteristics (Table 1).21 Most (52%) OA journals leave the copyright of published works with the author, whereas the traditional CA regime demands that the exploitation rights are transferred to the publisher. Moreover, only around 28% of all OA journals charge APCs—a remarkable finding, as the OA regime implies the transition from a "reader pays" to an "author pays" model. Other fees (e.g., a submission fee to cover the review process) are charged by only around 2% of all OA journals. Nevertheless, author fees may constitute a significant obstacle for authors to publish in an OA venue, especially for non-tenured researchers seeking to publish in highly ranked journals, which are most likely to charge APCs (Budzinski et al., 2020). This obstacle also applies in particular to many researchers from developing countries, whose institutions rarely cover such costs. Yet 18% of OA journals provide for the possibility to waive such author fees. OA publishing may indeed be considered a form of development aid, for two reasons: First, few institutions in the developing world have so far been able to subscribe to academic journals. The OA regime can thus promote scientific participation and thereby foster the global evolution of science as a "trial and error" process. Free or cheaper access to literature for researchers in the developing world tends to increase both their output (number of publications) and input (number of references) (Mueller-Langer et al., 2020). Second, an OA regime grants access to the latest results in science for groups who were previously excluded because they are not "club" members of a university library. This includes, e.g., corporate researchers, physicians, or farmers. Notwithstanding all the changes discussed above, scholarly journals remain the most important medium of communication in many disciplines. For more than 300 years, they have been fulfilling the four key functions of registration (attribution), certification of articles (peer review), dissemination (distribution, access), and preservation (scholarly memory and permanent archiving). In recent decades, a fifth function must be added: the evaluation of researchers and their institutions.22 The increasing importance of OA articles in scholarly journals has triggered some controversial discussions, in particular regarding the questions as to whether OA negatively affects the quality of journal articles, whether OA improves the dissemination of research results, and how OA affects the competition between academic publishers as well as the distribution between academics and non-academics, between poor and rich universities, and between poor and rich countries. We shall discuss each of these questions and some related points in more detail below. In times when "alternative facts" tend to trump sound research results, academia must provide the public with reliable information. The users of this information should be sufficiently certain that the results are based on proper methods, reflect the state of science in the specific field, and were obtained independently, e.g., of any political or commercial interests.23 For that reason, strict and continuous quality control of research results is a "conditio sine qua non" for academic publishing. Facilitating the communication of content from authors to readers, the academic journal market may be characterized as a two-sided market (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). While readers look for the most important research results in their fields by top authors, the latter are interested in the journal's reputation, in wide readership, and in citations. Thus, journals with high impact factors hold the greatest attraction to both sides. With this in mind, the crucial question arises what effect, if any, OA is likely to have on the quality of academic articles. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, is very skeptical regarding the quality of OA articles, especially those that are financed by APCs: "By adding a financial component to the front end of the scholarly publishing process, the open-access movement will ultimately corrupt scholarly publishing and hurt the communication and sharing of novel knowledge" (Beall, 2013, 590). A weak form of "corruption" would to OA publishers' incentives to peer review and to more submitted papers in to increase from However, the commercial publishers' incentives to increase the number of articles to the detriment of the journal's quality at the the quality the APCs that the journal is able to as well as A form of "corruption" refers to the of some OA journal publishers have been to in particular young and who on publications for their or to allow authors to publish articles in OA journals, by articles with or peer academics on their the or of journals, and so In established a of publishers, which was in January in to not only from the publishers but also from OA who that the to to OA. this quality to be a one which exists only in some disciplines (e.g., economics), whereas in other disciplines, such as some OA journals are the ranked journals and there is of a quality researchers their and if academic institutions and research to the APCs for articles by journals, this is to A by is that OA may new and will new and of their will remain (Beall, 2013, 590). However, this is a of the process, of whether the was submitted to a traditional or an OA and many prominent which that articles are generally more likely to the review than and creative but ones. In their contribution to this special & in a two-sided that OA can be a feature of journals. 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This article investigates the discourses of academic legitimacy that surround the production, consumption, and accreditation of online scholarship. Using the web-based media and cultural studies journal (http://journal.media-culture.org.au) as a case study, it examines how online scholarly journals often position themselves as occupying a space between the academic and the popular and as having a functional advantage over print-based media in promoting a spirit of public intellectualism. The current research agenda of both government and academe prioritises academic research that is efficient, self-promoting, and relevant to the public. Yet, although the cost-effectiveness and public-intellectual focus of online scholarship speak to these research priorities, online journals such as M/C Journal have occupied, and continue to occupy, an unstable position in relation to the perceived academic legitimacy of their content. Although some online scholarly journals have achieved a limited form of recognition within a system of accreditation that still privileges print-based scholarship, I argue that this, nevertheless, points to the fact that traditional textual notions of legitimate academic work continue to pervade the research agenda of an academe that increasingly promotes flexible delivery of teaching and online research initiatives.

Open access publishing in plastic surgery has rapidly gained traction in the past decade. This study investigated the digital landscape of plastic surgery open access publishing. This was a cross-sectional bibliometric investigation of plastic surgery-focused journals. Three publication models were investigated: subscription-only journals, hybrid journals offering both paywalled and open access publishing, and open access-only journals. Eighty-two journals were investigated. In 2010, open access journals comprised 18 percent of all plastic surgery journals online, subscription journals comprised 79 percent, and hybrid journals comprised 3 percent. Conversely, in 2020, open access journals comprised 55 percent of all journals, hybrid journals comprised 45 percent, and there were no subscription-only journals. Multivariable linear regression adjusting for article type/content demonstrated that open access articles from hybrid journals [beta coefficient, 1.3; F(4, 18) = 790; p = 0.05] and high-quality open access journals [beta coefficient, 0.9; F(4, 19) = 738; p = 0.04] were significantly positively associated with number of full-text views. Although impact factor and article processing charges were positively correlated [Pearson correlation coefficient: r(25) = 0.39, p = 0.04] for open access publishing, some high-quality open access journals were found to offer fee waivers/free publishing. Lastly, level of evidence offered by articles from open access versus hybrid journals differed. Overall, this study highlighted important distinctions between trustworthy and predatory journals offering open access publishing in plastic surgery. Open access publishing in trustworthy sources offers greater visibility and is not necessarily cost-prohibitive, but some open access journals can be limited in scope (i.e., less coverage of subspecialty topics) and quality of content. Study findings were used to generate recommendations for navigating open access publishing in plastic surgery.

Open Access and the <i>Journal of Industrial Ecology</i>

Plastic and reconstructive surgery: a hybrid open-access medical journal.

The Lancet journals welcome a new open access policy

Open access (OA) publishing represents an exciting opportunity to facilitate the dissemination of scientific information to global audiences. However, OA publishing is often associated with significant article processing charges (APCs) for authors, which may thus serve as a barrier to publication. In this observational cohort study, we aimed to characterize the landscape of OA publishing in oncology and, further, identify characteristics of oncology journals that are predictive of APCs. We identified oncology journals using the SCImago Journal & Country Rank database. All journals with an OA publication option and APC data openly available were included. We searched journal websites and tabulated journal characteristics, including APC amount (in US dollars), OA model (hybrid vs full), 2-year impact factor (IF), H-index, number of citable documents, modality/treatment specific (if applicable), and continent of origin. All APCs were converted to US-dollar equivalents for final analyses. Selecting variables with significant associations in the univariable analysis, we generated a multiple regression model to identify journal characteristics independently associated with OA APC amount. An audit of a random 10% sample of the data was independently performed by 2 authors to ensure data accuracy, precision, and reproducibility. Of 367 oncology journals screened, 251 met the final inclusion criteria. The median APC was US $2957 (IQR 1958-3450). The majority of journals (n=156, 62%) adopted the hybrid OA publication model and were based in Europe (n=119, 47%) or North America (n=87, 35%). The median (IQR) APC for all journals was US $2957 (1958-3540). Twenty-five (10%) journals had APCs greater than US $4000. There were 10 (4%) journals that offered OA publication with no publication charge. Univariable testing showed that journals with a greater number of citable documents (P<.001), higher 2-year IF (P<.001), higher H-index (P<.001), and those using the hybrid OA model (P<.001), or originating in Europe or North America (P<.001) tended to have higher APCs. In our multivariable model, the number of citable documents (β=US $367, SD US $133; P=.006), 2-year IF (US $1144, SD US $177; P<.001), hybrid OA publishing model (US $991, SD US $189; P<.001), and North American origin (US $838, SD US $186; P<.001) persisted as significant predictors of processing charges. OA publication costs are greater in oncology journals that publish more citable articles, use the hybrid OA model, have a higher IF, and are based in North America or Europe. These findings may inform targeted action to help the oncology community fully appreciate the benefits of open science.

Open Access Musings

Purpose: The number of open access (OA) journals is rapidly increasing, and it is very important for librarians to understand the influence of OA journals on the research community. This study investigated the influence of the OA journals listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) based on various indicators.Methods: The data for this study were prepared by combining the JCR 2014 to 2019 journal list with the number of hybrid OA articles obtained by searching the Web of Science. Each journal’s JCR indicators and article processing charge were added. The influence of OA journals was compared according to OA type, whether they were published by large publishers, and whether they were top gold OA journals.Results: Gold OA journals remained weaker in terms of JCR indicators than hybrid journals. However, the top 20 gold OA journals, accounting for 27.0% of all OA articles in JCR 2014 to 2019, were superior in all JCR indicators. The top three OA publishers (MDPI, BioMed Central, and Public Library of Science) showed potential for development despite concerns regarding poor journals. The top three subscription publishers were very active in OA publishing, but their actual share of hybrid OA articles (Elsevier, 5.1%; Springer, 10.1%; and Wiley, 12.4% in JCR 2019) was still insufficient.Conclusion: Some gold OA journals showed high competitiveness and even the possibility for development beyond traditional journals. The transition of subscription journals to hybrid journals was found to be at the early stage. In light of these findings, librarians should continue monitoring the influence of OA journals.

Background: To better understand the research impact on social media, alternative web-based metrics (Altmetrics) were developed. Open access (OA) publishing, which allows for widespread distribution of scientific content, has become increasingly common in the medical literature. However, the relationship between OA publishing and social media impact remains unclear. Purpose: To compare social media attention and citation rates between OA and subscription access (SA) research articles within the orthopaedic and sports medicine literature. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: Articles published as either OA or SA in 5 high-impact hybrid orthopaedic journals between January 2019 and December 2019 were analyzed. The primary outcome was the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), a validated measure of social media attention. Secondary outcomes included citation rates, article characteristics, and the number of shares on social media. Independent t tests and chi-square analyses were used to compare outcomes between OA and SA articles. A multivariable linear regression analysis was performed to determine the association between article type and AAS while controlling for bibliometric characteristics. Results: A total of 2143 articles (246 OA articles, 11.5%; 1897 SA articles, 88.5%) were included. The mean AAS among all OA articles was 62.4 ± 184.6 (range, 0-2032), whereas the mean AAS among all SA articles was 18.4 ± 109.8 (range, 0-3425), representing a statistically significant difference (P < .001). The mean citation rate among OA articles was significantly higher (17.0 ± 22.5; range, 0-139) than that of SA articles (8.6 ± 13.4; range, 0-169) (P < .001). Multivariable linear regression analysis demonstrated that OA status (β = 15.15; P = .044), number of institutions (β = 2.13; P = .023), studies classified as epidemiological investigations (β = 107.40; P < .001), and disclosure of a conflict of interest (β = −11.18; P = .032) were significantly associated with a higher AAS. Conclusion: OA articles resulted in significantly greater AAS and citations in comparison with SA articles. Articles published through the OA option in hybrid journals as well as those with a higher number of institutions, those that disclosed a conflict of interest, and those classified as epidemiological investigations were positively associated with greater AAS in addition to a greater number of citations. The potential for more extensive research dissemination inherent in the OA option may therefore translate into greater reach and social media attention.

Obama Signs Act to Make More Federally Funded Research Open Access: NIH Requirement Extended to Other Agencies

The leadership of the Society recognizes the potential of new trends toward open access (OA) publishing and the value of having the papers published in ESA journals freely accessible to the widest possible audience. However, because fully OA journals do not charge for subscriptions, applying such a model to the ESA journals would require major changes in the financial basis and the operations both of the ESA journals and of the Society’s activities more broadly. For most of our history, library subscriptions have paid for copyediting, typesetting, archiving, distribution, and other publication services, allowing us to keep charges to authors at a relatively low level. Subscription fees have also partially defrayed the costs of outreach, education, and scientific meetings, providing stable core funding to complement membership fees, the annual meeting, donations, and grants.

NIHR Open Access Policy Review Stakeholder Survey Report

Drivers And Barriers For Open Access Publishing - Wos 2016 Dataset

This article explores the financial dynamics of open access (OA) publication in Catalan universities by combining four data sources: publication data coupled with article processing charge (APC) estimates; information on journal subscriptions, transformative agreements and APC payments made by universities; acknowledgements of APC funding sources in OA scholarly outputs; and a survey of authors. The findings reveal a consistent increase in OA publication across Catalan universities, with 60% of the articles indexed in the Web of Science being published in either gold or hybrid OA in 2022. In parallel, investment in the research publishing system shows an upward trend. Resources allocated to journal subscription licenses have been redirected towards transformative agreements, leading to a rise in hybrid OA publications. Additional budget allocations have been made to accommodate APCs for gold OA journals. Authors employ varied funding sources for gold and hybrid OA, with university funding programmes and research grants commonly facilitating gold OA, while transformative agreements often support hybrid OA. Authors associated with Catalan universities frequently benefit from funding schemes and transformative agreements that are accessible to their coauthors. However, survey responses underscore the multifaceted nature of researchers’ financial support, including personal assets and waivers. Authors express frustration with the evolving OA landscape, particularly concerning the exorbitant publication fees. Nevertheless, the allure of high-impact journals and expedited peer review processes continues to incentivize authors towards gold OA. Researchers voice concerns regarding the lack of equitable funding programmes and potential conflicts of interest within gold OA models, which signals the risk of compromising peer review integrity to prioritize profits. This study underscores the need for further research to deepen our understanding of scholarly publishing expenditure and inform strategies for fostering a sustainable, equitable OA ecosystem.