Readership Awareness Series – Paper 10: Open Access Publishing

INTRODUCTION

‘Open-access publication’ is a complex and multi-layered term that can be confusing and perceived differently by various stakeholders. The term open-access has been defined in variable ways in the Berlin, Bethesda, and Budapest Declarations of the early 2000s (BBB or triple B declarations).^1–3 In a broad sense open access (OA) papers are those where the authors and the publishers provide free access to any reader who has internet access. Essentially it is a publishing model that provides research as ‘free to read’ and re-use provided the source is appropriately attributed. So, if anyone can have access to a particular paper and the authors of it can distribute their work freely, how would the publisher be compensated for the cost involved in publishing? Publishing houses are not charitable organizations, and they usually make profits from the article subscription charges. Hence in open-access publishing, the cost of the publication and the loss of subscription profits are compensated by article processing charges (APC), which are levied by the publishers on the authors or their institutions. The typical APCs for most journals range from $1500–$5000 but may be higher for more prestigious journals.⁴ OA papers are published with different types of Creative Commons licence (CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-ND, CC BY-NC-ND-SA) by which the authors retain their copyrights and what others can do with the research work provided full credit is given to the original source.

THE RATIONALE FOR OPEN-ACCESS AND ITS ADVANTAGES^1–7

There are several reasons which favour open access and are listed below.

1. The rising journal subscription costs are increasingly placing severe strain on the institutional and library budgets.

2. It is unfair for large parts of the underdeveloped world to be deprived of access to medical research due to economic reasons.

3. Subscription costs for taxpayer-funded research mean the public is being charged twice to access the medical research.

4. Several research works involve members of the public and paying to access it is not in the public interest.

5. The audience that can consume open-access research is far larger than those that can consume subscription-based research.

6. Open-access research is known to garner a greater number of views, citations, and increased visibility.

7. Implementation of research into clinical practice is significantly delayed by copyright restrictions that prevent public access and the re-use of published content for wider awareness. Hence there is greater adoption of research with OA models.

8. Altmetric data suggest a greater societal impact of OA research.

9. Improves the informed decision-making process for the patients and the physicians.

10. OA research has the potential to level the playing field for all researchers, address disparities in public health, and increase public trust in science.

11. OA research has the advantage of speed in reaching its readers compared to traditional print-based subscription journals.

12. Since there is no paper involved, OA models are environment and climate-friendly.

MODELS OF OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING^8–12

There are several models of Open Access publishing and include ‘Green OA’, ‘Gold OA’, ‘Platinum OA’, and ‘Plan S OA’. Green OA is one where the authors self-archive or deposit their work in institutional or subject-based open access repositories. The authors do not pay APCs. Following publication in a journal, these would be accessible to the public after an embargo period. The embargo is usually of 6–12 months. While the readers can access the papers after the embargo ends, they would not have access to newer research due to the time restrictions. The copyrights in the Green OA model are retained by the publishers or affiliated societies with restrictions for their re-use. Green OA does not however comply with regulations and requirements of many funding agencies. In the ‘Gold OA model’, the paper is made freely available to the public without an embargo period. The readers can access them without barriers. The cost is usually paid by the authors and can be subsidized by the publisher on socioeconomic grounds. Copyrights for Gold OA are regulated by Creative Commons license and depending on the type of licensing, the reader may have the liberty to distribute, display, adapt from, or re-use the research work. In ‘Platinum OA model’, the research work is freely available for all to read and re-use but instead of the author, the cost is paid by the funders, subsidies, or donations. Of late, the term ‘Platinum’ is not commonly used, and its features are part of Gold OA models today. An uncommon model is the ‘ Bronze OA’, where the journal makes the paper free to read, but only on their website, but it still controls the licence and the work cannot be distributed or reposted elsewhere in any form.

‘Plan S OA’ means that the funders make it mandatory for the researchers to publish their work only in fully OA journals or platforms and that the work should be immediately available through open-access repositories without embargo. Plan S does not support or encourage hybrid models of publishing (specific laid down temporary exceptions may be provided on request). Hybrid journals are transformative journals where the authors have options to choose between an OA or a subscription model of publishing and are seen as a transformative step towards achieving full OA in the future.

LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES OF OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING^{1–4,9,13–16}

Several concerns have arisen secondary to the rise of open-access publishing which contributed to the resistance in wider adoption of OA models. Some of the major ones include the following.

1. Publishers can generate more income if they publish more OA and that may theoretically lower the quality of papers that are accepted. However, there is no robust data to prove this.

2. Predatory publishers and journals actively solicit APCs and have become parasites of open-access systems. However, it does not mean that all OA are predatory in nature and there are many high-quality OA journals out there.

3. Most authors or their institutions from the under-developed or developing world would not be able to afford the OA charges, including some who have limited extra-mural funding.

4. Plan S OA programs may prevent researchers from publishing in journals that are sought after by their peers.

5. OA publishing promotes inequity and exacerbates the disparity between funded and non-funded researchers. However, several hybrid journals may provide considerable discounts to authors based on several factors (low to middle-income countries, students, researchers without grants, and underrepresented minorities).

6. Journals and publishers are not usually transparent about the costs involved and revenues generated to justify their APCs. One intended goal of OA to reduce the cost of publication is not happening.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS {FRANK, DOAJ, SCOAP)

The Directory of Open-Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that houses all the OA journals and articles. It is an extensive global index currently housing 20,434 journals and 10,001,172 articles [16^th March 2024] and committed to providing everyone with access to quality research and information.¹⁷ The way information was distributed and used during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the power of open-access publishing. Transformative agreements with the publishers and increasing numbers of journals signing on to be on the Plan S model is an encouraging sign. To defray or minimize the OA costs to the authors and their institutes, the publishers and journals have introduced Institutional membership programs. Scholarly societies collaborating and publishing in partnership with commercial publishers provide an opportunity for a wider representation and a larger say for research communities. SCOAP³(Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is a unique partnership of over 3000 libraries and funders in 44 countries who collaborated with the publishers to convert several particle physics journals to OA and support OA publishing at no cost to the authors.¹⁸ The success of SCOAP³ is an encouraging sign and opens avenues for other scientific disciplines to follow and facilitate research communities and the public to reap the benefits of open-access publishing.

FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE

Mohammad Javed Ali receives royalties from Springer for the textbook “Principles and Practice of Lacrimal Surgery’ and ‘Atlas of Lacrimal Drainage Disorders’, and the ‘Video Atlas of Lacrimal Surgery’.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation