Name:
Open Access Evolution, Revolution, or Demise? What now?
Description:
Open Access Evolution, Revolution, or Demise? What now?
Thumbnail URL:
https://cadmoremediastorage.blob.core.windows.net/dbed8e63-902a-44cb-8e54-8066bee52daa/thumbnails/dbed8e63-902a-44cb-8e54-8066bee52daa.png
Duration:
T01H02M02S
Embed URL:
https://stream.cadmore.media/player/dbed8e63-902a-44cb-8e54-8066bee52daa
Content URL:
https://cadmoreoriginalmedia.blob.core.windows.net/dbed8e63-902a-44cb-8e54-8066bee52daa/GMT20240320-150022_Recording_gallery_1920x1080.mp4?sv=2019-02-02&sr=c&sig=0%2FYXkfvpa8aYVq3c%2FT61g%2BA3WIMifuqVQld%2Bei%2B9W9Y%3D&st=2025-07-16T02%3A58%3A46Z&se=2025-07-16T05%3A03%3A46Z&sp=r
Upload Date:
2024-07-22T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining. We're just assembling folks.
Hello, everyone. We're just gathering and as soon as we are. Uh, we've got a good amount of folks signed in. We'll begin in about 30s. OK we're going to get underway. So thank you all and welcome to today's webinar, open access evolution, revolution or demise.
What now? Before we start, I want to thank our 2024 education sponsors, access innovations open, Athens and Silverchair. We are, as always, grateful for your support. My name is Lori Carlin and I'm the Chief Commercial Officer at Delta bank and the SSP education committee webinar chair. Before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items to review.
Attendee microphones have been muted automatically. Please use the Q&A feature in Zoom to enter questions for the moderators and panelists. You can also use the chat feature to communicate directly with other participants and organizers. Closed captioning. Closed captions have been enabled and you can view captions by selecting the More option on your screen and choosing show captions.
This one hour session will be recorded and available to registrants following today's event. Registered attendees will be sent an email when the recording is available and a quick note on SSPS code of conduct and today's meeting. We are committed to diversity, equity and providing an inclusive meeting environment that fosters open dialogue and the free expression of ideas, free of harassment, discrimination, hostile conduct.
We ask all participants whether speaking or in chat, to consider and debate relevant viewpoints in an orderly, respectful and fair manner. We'd like to also promote the SSP generations fund, help us reach our goal of raising $500,000 to ensure the future of our fellowship and mentoring programs and Dea initiatives. Join the more than 350 organizations and individuals that have already donated.
Scan the QR code for more information and to donate. At the conclusion of today's discussion, you will receive a post-event evaluation via email and we encourage you to provide feedback to help shape future SSP programming. It's now my pleasure to introduce our moderator today, Dr. Mohammed subhani. Dr. subhani holds a PhD in financial econometrics and data science and a postdoc in open science and is a passionate advocate for open science and ethical initiatives in scholarly communication.
Dr. subhani is an award winning journal editor, earned the Web of Science scholar one vision award in 2015. He currently holds a position of Professor and director of post graduate studies and research at ilma University. He serves as a doaj ambassador and associate editor of crossref, ambassador and a director of force11 focusing on promoting open access, publishing best practices and liaisoning liaising with key stakeholders.
He's a lead of Creative Commons Pakistan, a policy expert on open access at UNESCO and an IP specialist at the World Bank. He's also an editor of plos one, a scientific publishing consultant for the higher Education Commission government of Pakistan and an author of over 100 scientific articles. So we are very honored to have Dr. Sobana here with us today to moderate this webinar for our webinar today, we're focusing on the current state of open access, looking at it through the lens of what now and where should we be focusing our attention or what should we be investigating going forward to improve on what's working well and address some of the issues or downsides related to open access?
I'll turn over to Dr. Sobana now, who will kick off the webinar and have all the panelists introduce themselves. You may be on mute, Dr. Sobana. All right. OK Thank you very much, Lori. Such a fantastic intro.
And so one thing you forgot that I'm also the education committee member of society for Scholarly Publishing. Anyways, Thanks. Thanks very much again. Uh, Yeah. Uh, you know, basically we have a fantastic, amazing, distinguished speakers with us and taught from many.
So giulia. Kostova from frontiers, Dominic Mitchell from Megan from tripoli and Dan Pollock from Delta. Think obviously before actually in fact proceeding further, I'll be requesting all of these speakers to please introduce yourselves. Firstly taught. Yes, sir. Thank you and welcome, everyone.
My name is Todd carpenter. I'm the executive director of the National Information Standards Organization in the Uc. That's niso. I serve in a variety of capacities as well in the community. I am one of the chefs on the scholarly kitchen, Uh, most recently past president of force11 with Dr. Sobana on the board of force11 serve as treasurer of the book industry study group, and I'm also chair of the ISO technical subcommittee that focuses on identification and description for cultural content.
Um, so I'm super excited to have this conversation. Looking forward to, to a great conversation. Thanks perfect. Perfect So when introducing yourself, please also give your quick opening statement about open access. Open access. Open access is definitely an evolution. As with all transformations in publishing, these things happen over the space of years, decades rather than the space of the space of minutes.
Um, it's amazing the transformations that have happened in the last 25 ish years related to open access. And my expectation is that it will probably be many, many, many more years as we move through these changes in our community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Fantastic now I'll be requesting Julia Costello from frontiers.
So please kindly introduce yourself who you are and your organizations, and also kindly ask you something about the open access to first line access. Great Thank you. Thank you very much for listening. And good morning, everybody, and welcome. I am director of publishing at frontiers. We are a leading research publisher and open science platform, the third large, the sixth largest and the third most cited.
And we publish peer reviewed research in a range of disciplines, all of it free to read, to access and build upon. In my role, I oversee us strategy and operations and I'm also involved in science and Technology Policy and advocacy. I am also a committed SSP volunteer, including the co-chair of the generations fund, which was very glad to see highlighted earlier today.
And now a nominee for the board member at large position at SSP. Um, as to where we are with open, open access, I think that we are at a critical juncture in the adoption of we have accomplished a lot and I think have learned valuable lessons, including very recently having had really a real life, you know, test case of the power of open science. We've seen what it could do to help us address some of the challenges that we face, not just as an industry, but honestly as a world.
Right and and, you know, I think we also recognize that there is a lot more to do across the ecosystem. And I feel that this is a real opportunity for us to get it right and to get it right. Um, quickly or quickly or then perhaps traditionally, some of the transformations have unfolded in our industry and this is what I'm hoping for. So thank you very much for this wonderful conversation.
Thank Thank you very much, Julia. Now I'll be requesting Dominic Mitchell, sir. Going to introduce yourself. And also a few quick opening statement about open access. Thanks, Dr. Simone. My name is Dominic Mitchell. I work at the Directory of Open Access Journals. I've been there for 11 years. I am responsible for developing the platform, making sure that it remains up and running and.
And reliable. I'm also work closely with the executive committee to make sure that our strategy aligns with our stakeholders. And currently I'm the chair of the board of directors at aspa and I also chair the committee of think check, submit both sort of organizations. Doj is very closely involved in, um, and I think that it's open access is an evolution and has also led to a little bit of a revolution.
Um, and that makes me very happy to, to be able to say that because I think that there's been some amazing developments, you know, maybe, um, not in the traditional sort of areas that we might be looking for in terms of journal publishing. But around the world, that global community that comes into contact. We've seen some fantastic things. Um, so certainly not demise, but an evolution and a revolution.
Thank you. Thanks Thanks very much, Dominic. And now I'll be requesting Megan from triple A's to please introduce yourself along with the first few opening statements about open access. Thanks so much. Good to see everybody today. My name is Megan Thee Stallion. I'm the communications director for the science family of journals.
In my role, I lead a team of science writers who are focused on communicating new research from our journals to 8,000 and growing global journals. We publish six journals in total at the science family. Five of our journals are green, open access, and one is gold. And our major considerations in our work around open access and public access are author, inclusivity and editorial quality. We believe public access should foster a diverse universe not only of readers, but also of authors, regardless of their economic circumstances.
We also believe that scientific quality and integrity should be prioritized. And as a last note, we believe it's important to optimize scientific communication in a situationally appropriate manner for every audience. So for scientists, that means ensuring the data is available for purposes of reproducing analysis. But for non scientists simply sharing a paper and the data may not have an impact.
Instead, situationally appropriate communication about a discovery may really help to cultivate their interest in the work and the team I lead. The science press package team helps to support that by doing outreach to global journals. As to the question of evolution, revolution or demise, I think it's evolution for all the reasons people outlined here, and including because of the changing and growing awareness for researchers about what open means for them.
Thank you. Perfect Thanks. Thank you very much. Now, I'll be requesting now the Dan Pollack from Delta. Thank you. Please introduce yourself along with first few things. First, few definition or statement on open access. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone.
Apologies for the croaky voice. It is a result of the London book fair last week. I've obviously picked up a lug not COVID tested for that yesterday. But anyway, so my name is Dan Pollack. I'm the token consultant on the panel, which really what that means is I spend a lot of time crunching numbers and looking at observations of what's going on out there publication, output, macroeconomics, all sorts of stuff.
And then I try and extract trends from that and provide advice to people who are looking to react or deal with our changing and evolving or evolving world. Very briefly, my background was originally an engineer, manufacturing engineer. I've stumbled into publishing by mistake and I've produced digital online products for Elsevier. I ran nature.com for a few years and I've had various stints as a consultant over that time.
So I've seen open access grow and evolve really since the mid-noughties and excuse me, in terms of what I think about open access now, I was asked to share, Just three slides just to give us some numbers, some data that we can actually throw out there. Plant in the back of your mind. And then then hope that as the debate goes on, we'll be able to talk about them.
This first slide is simply showing in the pink bars. The bottom half of each bar is the share of total scholarly output that is published. Open access could be under a fully open gold journal. It could be open access in hybrid. So free to read, free to reuse gray bit at the top is the proportion that's behind a paywall effectively. And as you can see over time, going back from 2009 on the left, we've had a slow but steady increase in share of open access.
So I think to everybody who says this is more evolution than revolution, here's the evidence that I think supports that. According to our data and our sample, we think we're now about halfway to roughly 50% of output is now open access. But the reason that I've got that uppy Downy arrow on the right is to make the point that the size of those pink bars may move up or down, depending on your definition of scholarly content, depending on your definition of open.
So, for example, some people will include public access. Think of the Uc in that the bars will shift up and down by a bit, maybe 1915 percentage points. Um, but the point is, however you define it, I think you'll find that you'll get this similar pattern of steady growth over time that will continue, certainly not demise. However, um, to paraphrase William Gibson, the future may be here, but it is not evenly distributed.
So the uptake of open access very much depends on the discipline in which you are operating. And that's what this slide is about. This slide says, imagine you take one of those vertical bars, we'll turn it horizontally, we'll split the orange bit out into yellow, fully open access journals and blue open access in hybrid. How does the uptake look then we'll basically physical sciences roughly halfway with a sort of 3/4 of output in fully open journals, one quarter in hybrid.
So if you like, that's the physical sciences roughly tracking our overall trend. This is from 2022, but dive into the physical sciences and you'll get a very different picture depending on the discipline. So Pascal high-energy physics I would suggest, is a much more revolutionary side of things. People may be familiar with scope three that really kicked off many years ago now.
So open access is very heavily used, very high proportion of output in particle high-energy physics is open and most of that is in gold, fully open journals, but condensed matter physics is much more cautiously, probably very, very slow, evolutionary, much, much lower share of their output is open access. So your mileage may vary. And I think that's an important nuance to bear in mind as we get into our discussions.
Final slide. I promise you this won't be death by PowerPoint. This one's a little bit more complicated at first glance, but it does break down fairly simply. And here we are discussing equitability and affordability of open access. And what we're looking at is article processing charges or apcs. At the moment, publishers tend to set their prices for apcs and indeed subscriptions.
They'll set a price, let's say, in dollars, and they'll charge that same price wherever they sell that product. Throughout the world. However, $1,000 may be way more affordable to the average Swiss citizen than it might be to the average, say, Brazilian citizen. So that then begs the question about affordability. And there's been quite a lot of discussion about affordability of open access and whether or not we should change our pricing.
And instead of setting a flat price everywhere, change the price depending on the country and depending on the affordability that that country has compared with others. Lots of technical detail behind this, but there's basically something called purchasing power parity. It's a very well and widely recognized economic measure that seeks to quantify how affordable things are depending on the country they're in.
And this chart says, if we were to move to an affordability based model for apcs, how much should we change our prices depending on the country1.html per country, some fairly arbitrary groupings, but for example, countries in North America. So the rectangle top left really in an affordability model would be paying more because they tend to be wealthier. Compare and contrast with bottom right? The low income countries according to World Bank definitions, you'd expect we'd charge less.
So that's essentially what this chart is showing. Should we charge more or loves to make things affordable? The charts being calibrated such that if we were to move to the model here, we wouldn't lose any value in the total publishing system. So the total amount of money spent globally would be the same. So that's why the richer countries will pay a bit more, the poorer countries will pay a bit less.
Probably no surprises there. But one thing that stands out, if you compare, say, the European union, so that second bar from the left, per country. You see that the EU, which I would suggest most people would consider to be a wealthy area of the world. Within that very wide umbrella, there's quite a spread of countries. So there's some very wealthy countries at the top and some less wealthy countries dots at the bottom.
And the thing I find interesting is if I can compare the quote, wealthy unquote, like the quotes. If I compare the wealthy EU with the next bar across. So this is the research for life. This is one of the publishing industry's bodies that looks at discounting rates. Research for life group a countries are usually countries that publishers grant a complete waiver to.
They are considered the, quote, poorest countries, and therefore publishers will tend to waive subscriptions or article processing charge fees. But what I find interesting is that the wealthiest research for life group countries are actually wealthier than the wealthiest EU countries. So the revolution theory concept behind this slide is that if we were to move to an affordability based model, countries would pay very different things and we'd probably get some fairly counterintuitive, slightly challenging results with some countries paying more where we may be expecting them to pay less and vice versa.
So complicated slide, but I hope the point is fairly clear and with that I shall hand back to our illustrious chair and Thank you very much. I think may still be on mute, Dr. Sobana. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for pointing me out as a fantastic insights given by the end of now coming on the questions, obviously, in fact, in the mind of me and other basically my colleagues, as you know, basically the today's proposition is evolution revolution are possible demise of open access very exactly where standing here.
So When we're basically, in fact, getting this proposition. Obviously, there are many questions. They're basically patient and left it in the minds of many of its stakeholders. Like Richard pointer recently expressed his opinion that open access has fallen short of its promises. Citing Scholarly Kitchen post, he contends that open access has not met its objective and is unlikely to do so in the future.
So yeah, so. Keeping this what has been stated by Richard Simon to Richard point. Sorry what are your thoughts on this? Starting with Dominic. Dominic Mitchell, sir. Thank you. Um, so I don't think it's true that open access has been a failure.
Um, I don't think it's happened very quickly. Um, and sometimes I, too, get frustrated with the speed that things change. But I think it depends very much where you focus, where are you looking to see that change? And I think that if you're focusing solely on the sort of traditional powerhouses of scholarly publishing, you know, the commercial publishers in North America and in Europe, then yeah, I mean, there are that things have been delayed and who can blame them?
Commercial publishers have capitalized in a capitalist society and they have made that's what they're there to do. But if you look away from that society, if you look away from that sort of that focus and look at the entire ecosystem of scholarly research output, then I think that open access has been an absolute success. It's sown the seeds for open research and open metadata. It's raised awareness around knowledge equity, diamond journals, and there's even been activism, open science activism.
Um, it's allowed experimentation both in terms of what's published and how it's published. And if you look at doj's profile over the last 20 years, we celebrated our 20th year last year. We were dominated for a long time by journals from Brazil, USA and the UK for the first 15 years of doj's existence. And if you look at our profile today, Indonesia has the most journals indexed in out of any other country in the world, all of them open access and all of them peer reviewed.
And how else would that have become possible if it hadn't been for open access? Breaking down these traditional barriers of scholarly publishing and breaking away from the norms that that, you know, that had been sort of been put there. All right. Buffett Julia, what is your point of view on it, on this? Yeah Thank you very much.
I'm going to build on everything that Dominic said. I think, you know, a lot of promises are projected or have been projected on open access. And and I do think that it depends on which ones you focus on and how you define those promises very much. You know, along the same lines of the way that Dom responded to this question, I mean, for frontiers. The lodestone promise of open access is accessibility, right?
And and that promise comes in two parts, right? One part is having access to scientific research findings. And as we saw from the slides that Dan just shared with us, we've made a lot of progress in that regard. I mean, just 10 years ago, more like more than 75% of all research was locked behind paywalls. Now, I think we're just, you know, we're very much on our way to achieving accessibility for readers and not only for readers, but also for machines.
Given kind of the evolution and the growing importance that technology plays in research. Right? so that's the first part. The other part, I think, concerns the ability for more scientists from all around the world to contribute valid findings and data to the scientific records. And and I think that that is sometimes still being called into question. So if I put it another way, I think it's still far too easy to lock science or research behind paywalls while openness at scale is viewed with suspicion.
Right and yet we are in this age of AI, of abundant misinformation of a lot of low quality content circulating freely at massive scale. And so I think it is really critical right now that validated scientific knowledge is also allowed to do the same. Right and I think this is the juncture that we are in. So to come back to the question I feel compelled to ask Richard to keep the faith for a little longer while at the same time, I think all of us would recognize that there is a lot more work to be done.
And that's why I think that this discussion here today is just so important for us. You're still on mute. I was finished. Thought sorry. No well, so I'll jump in. Um, I think.
I think there's a couple things going on. When Richard poynder talks about the failure of to achieve its deliver on its promises and. I think that's shortsighted in some respects. If you look at the charts and say, you know, we've surpassed 50% on our way to 60 plus of content being openly available, there's it'd be difficult to look at that chart and say that that's not a success.
Particularly if you consider how conservative the research community is when it comes to publishing their outputs. If you're pre-tenure, you're going to be very careful about where you're posting your results. And in many respects, it took a long time for the community to recognize the value and recognize the. The inherent quality isn't diminished by publishing something open access or in a different forum.
It's a social change that social change takes a long time, particularly in our community. I think the people at the time were thinking, Oh well, we've got the technical tools to post things onto the internet, so that's free. So that won't be a problem. And most change that happens, that is tied to technology has really nothing to do with technology and has everything to do with the social changes necessary to support it.
So the move towards open access isn't just do we have websites and can we post PDF documents? It really is a cultural shift that involves consideration of promotion, tenure, the scholarly review process, the business models, all of those things that inevitably was going to take decades. And the fact that we've gotten to 60, 50, 60% in 2025 years is actually amazing.
I take real issue with sort of the moving of the goalposts, if you will, if you consider the primary point of open access has historically been access and providing, removing the paywall barriers to getting access to content and sharing it in reusable fashions, we've made a lot of progress about that. If you think that the goal was to remove commercial interests from the scholarly community, that was always short.
It was always a dream that will never be fulfilled because people running these commercial organizations are smart and they can figure things out and they will develop a model that will work with open access. And if your goal is to remove commercial activity from our space, I think that is unlikely to ever happen. But this was always from my perspective, open access was about facilitating science and removing barriers to science.
Not let's get all of the money out of scholarly communications, which it seems like some of the people that maybe Richard point don't want to speak for him. But it seems like there's an underlying current in that seems problematic from my perspective. Absolutely, yes. Now, anything more, Dan or Megan, you would like to add before moving on to the next question, please?
Sure I'd be happy to respond a little bit on that. I want to echo much of what has been said here. Much good has happened. There's more to be done. And maybe this is more complicated than Richard laid out in that Scholarly Kitchen post. But they're the three pillars of the open access movement that he laid out were accessibility, affordability and equity.
And the one where we have the greatest interest, focus and eagerness to do study now, where we're gathering data through our surveys, early career listening sessions and author survey my team runs. International outreach is the equity for authors interested in publishing, especially in our early career listening sessions, we're hearing feedback that researchers feel a little bit alienated from open access and are not understanding the requirements or the costs.
And when they do learn of them, they can be challenged, as our surveys have shown. So and this is a greater reality for researchers in certain underfunded disciplines based on career stage, based on gender. So this is an area where we're really hoping to continue to foster productive discussions, learn what we can to help benefit the scientific community, to ensure that authors everywhere can contribute and publish in journals and outlets that matter to them.
Thank you. Perfect perfect. Now, just a couple of thoughts. Dr. sobhani, please. Um, yeah, just think he's slightly more broadly about this. So, um, a couple of notes. I think somebody in the comments meant mentioned 60% uptake, open access in a different context.
So back to my point, depending on how you define it, you find, you know, we may have gone quite a bit further or if you go to there's another scholarly publishing society, I won't mention their name, but they have a dashboard up and they would suggest we have a lower uptake of open access. So that sort of definition of success or failure in itself, it actually very much depends on the lens through which you're looking at the data. There's no right or wrong answer here.
Um, and then a couple of other things that, that in my view, open access is leading to the, the Revolutionary different ways of conceiving the process of publishing. You know, we talk about the rise of preprint servers, but then that in turn starts to talk about overlay types of publishing, the sort of stuff that I think elife are doing. You know, we're beginning to challenge the basic way in which we take in and process a scholarly paper, and I think that's quite important.
I think that that that's, that's part of this conversation. And bear in mind, the scholarly paper is 350 odd years old. You could probably trace a lot of current societies back to the Victorian age. So the fact we're thinking about this and how we do it, I think that that's quite an important part of this story and therefore could be considered a success factor if success is about progress and adapting to get the best out of the current technology.
And then finally the data itself, the whole conversation about open science, open data, if you look at a lot of policies about open access, let's say the Nelson memo generated a lot of column inches. Forgive the old print, um, in, in publishing circles, but 2/3 of the wording in the Nelson memo was actually about data sharing. It was not about publishing.
So again, I think this, this broader discussion of what open means and how it's beginning to revolutionize the way we share information and acquire knowledge is, I think, a sign that it's getting successful and that we're making progress. Why? perfect.
Perfect wonderful. So this discourages surrounding equity and open access is not novel. As as similar issues have existed with subscription and other publishing models. Nonetheless, a 2022 survey conducted by AAA as highlighted the challenges researchers encounter when bearing the cost of publishing in open access journals.
This open access effectively tackle equity concerns and what strategies can be employed to promote equity in scholarly publishing. Making a great. Megan, you please share your thoughts on this matter? Yes Thank you. And Thanks for communicating about the survey that triple did. We conducted a survey in 2022 and had some 400 researcher responses from researchers in the United States.
So I think in response to this question, it's first important to emphasize there's no one size fits all model here for scientific journals. Each journal in the ecosystem is different. This is true for science, for example, where we publish not only research but a number of news and commentary pieces each week. And that said, as I noted in my opening remarks, we're doing a lot of listening to researchers right now through different channels, and they're elevating issues based on their discipline, career stage or institutional affiliation regarding their ability to publish, especially in our early career listening sessions, we've heard feedback that researchers, when they learn the cost of open access, can be challenged by them.
That's what we saw in that survey that you mentioned as well. So equity for authors seeking to publish in journals of their choice is an issue that we're focused on. And we do think for us, green open access is very well positioned to solve this equity issue. When we tell authors for our five green journals that they can publish their accepted manuscript freely at any repository they choose immediately upon publication, they're typically thrilled by this.
We were excited to see a paper published in scientometrics in January this year too, that reported that papers posted by a green open access have a greater diversity in their citations. In terms of the number of unique citing actors, institutions, countries, subregions. I can put a link to that paper in the chat. Thank you.
Perfect all right. So thank you very much. Todd, you would you like to contribute to anything further in this connection? Yes sorry. Equity is a huge issue in our community. There are vast differences between the resources of a researcher at a R1 University in the Uc that's well funded and has a large endowment and is getting, you know, a steady stream of grant income versus someone at a smaller institution versus someone in, in Brazil or Argentina or sub-Saharan Africa.
Thinking back to the days of, you know, traditional subscriptions, there was granularity in subscription rates across the world. What an institution would be charged in the Uc or Western Europe versus what an institution was charged in Indonesia were different. And there was a lot of study and research into and I personally wrote, did one of these models in developing pricing for, you know, different regions in the Uc and different institutions.
We're just at the beginning of developing the business models that support. And I expect over time, there will be adjustments in the pricing model for apk's. I think to Megan's point, there are significant differences between domains. If you are doing high energy particle physics, you are or, you know, biochemistry, you are in a much better place when it comes to funding your research.
If you are writing, if you are doing philosophy or literature study or history, the likelihood that you have any grant funding at all or any grant funding that numbers above like the low four figures. The opportunities for you to write into your grant and that is anything more than maybe $100 is unrealistic and extending open access into domains that don't have those kind of well-funded resources is always going to be a barrier.
And maybe this is an area where diamond can support open access funding. But the economics of once you get outside of those top level domains that don't want to say top level, want to say like the well funded domains of science, open access and the publishing become difficult. And I'm one of the things I'm worried about with the move towards open access is the haves have more and those who never had continue to not have and will, you know, increasingly get left behind.
And we need to address that as a community. I think I absolutely agreed. And I'd add to that difference between haves and have nots and affordability is business model agnostic. So I'm old enough to remember the serials crisis. There were conversations going on, you know, well before open access was as prevalent as it is today about affordability of subscriptions.
We're now seeing an increasing amount of discussion moving away from per article models back to things like say, subscribe to open. All good stuff. But we exactly as you said, you know, we risk simply moving from frying pan to fire or moving the deck chairs across the deck of the Titanic over whichever metaphor you want to use. So I think, you know, there is a fundamental problem in affordability.
Um, and also, I've had a couple of questions in the Q&A about that last slide that I showed. And just to make the point that the slide show simply illustrates a principle, I've taken a macroeconomic measure of a country's purchasing power and said, you know, in theory you can move prices based on that as a criteria or criterion, but other criteria exist. So what about within countries there will be less funded or richer and poorer areas.
I don't know what measure you might use for that. The discipline. Exactly that that's another dimension. So we may in actual fact, need a multidimensional model to address some of these problems of affordability and of the gap between rich and poor that transcend some of our sort of mundane workaday business model type considerations. Thanks, Jen.
Thanks, Todd. Julian and don, is there anything you would like to add before we proceed? Yeah Thanks very much for listening. I'd like to just quickly make a good comment or a follow up on what was already said here. I think we're very right to keep focused on this important concept. I mean, and yes, equity has been a problem.
It has been a problem under a subscription models under other models that exist out there. And that's why I so appreciated that the Nelson memo made it such a central pillar. Right? we want open science growth to be inclusive. Leaving aside some of the bigger questions about broader definitions of equity, including, for example, what the taxpaying public is entitled to, and focusing more specifically here on the equity on the author equity beta.
I think Megan's point is absolutely right, that, you know, there's no one size fits all. That's not the right approach to take. But I also think that it's important and certainly the limitations of the APC model are well known and recognized. Let's kind of think about the history of this, though, right? I mean, I think one of the main benefits of the APC model was the price transparency that it brought, right?
Which was intended to correct some of the notorious obscure deal pricing and licensing terms, which was a major, major and continues to be, I think in some respect, a friction point in our industry. So that's the first that's the first thing to say. But I also think it's worth remembering that know, there are multiple ways to fund open access, right. Including including gold.
Right so, for instance, as we move forward toward wider adoption of open access, you know, the limitations of the APC models have, I think, become clearer. And certainly, you know, we're very much aware that that is not necessarily the preferred model for all stakeholders. Right? you mentioned researchers in the humanities and social sciences.
This is my own academic field, right? And so so, you know, one way in which we at frontiers are addressing this is to come up with different partnership models, right? That would broaden access to publishing funds for researchers, right? So, for example, coming back to the example because of such partnerships, researchers who do not get any grants and if they do, 5,000 seems like a wealth.
You know, it seems like you hit the jackpot, right? Um, because of such partnerships for the first time, do those researchers have access to cover open access fees? And I personally as a humanist and as a publisher, think that this is really quite positive for some of those fields, right? So we at frontiers are expanding our portfolio, you know, of models precisely because we want to come up with tailored plans and tailored models that would meet our institutional partnerships needs, but also the researchers and the communities that we serve.
Right? and and, you know, we've got over 750 of those now, both, you know, at the institutional partnership level as well as with research intensive nations. And, you know, that really allow them to kind of proceed with that. And I think looking ahead, we'll continue to experiment with models while also driving a wider adoption of open access scale in a way that is transparent and sustainable.
All right. Yeah true. Open access publishing does not just revolve around the APC models. There is a Diamond Model as well. So what potential role can Diamond Model play and how are they typically funded? Dominic, would you like to initiate this discussion? Yes, definitely.
So I'd like to start off by saying that the 67% of the journals in DOJ don't charge any fees at all. That's that's not just aipcs, but any fees at all. So they're most definitely diamond journals. And in 2021, there was it was estimated that there were 29,000 diamond journals in the world. So think going back to the question there about equity, you know, I think can also, if you brighten that, broaden that horizon and start looking at all the journals in the world, then there are other options available.
And I think that there's been a lot of interest in and a lot of research done around diamond journals lately, most of it prompted by science Europe making diamond journal publishing one of their sort of focus areas areas. And there was this open access diamond journal study that was the most comprehensive attempt to try and paint the landscapes, the landscape of the role and profile of diamond journals. Um, and.
That study came to the conclusion that, you know, this vast family of diamond journals had previously been obscured by discussions mainly focused on the transformation of commercial models for academic publishing. So I think it's absolutely vital that diamond publishing is here in this discussion. And I think that they have a very, very important role, role to play.
The headline findings from that study were that it is a very wide archipelago of relatively small journals serving a diverse community. Um, that they have a mix of, of scientific strengths and operational challenges, mostly around sort of organization, collaboration and funding. And to answer the last bit about how they funded that, the majority of these journals use an economy that largely depends on volunteers, universities and government.
Perfect Dan, do you have any insight or observation regarding timing models in the market? I'm in a little bit that mean that study it was incredibly worthwhile study. Um, one of the things that came out of it for me was the issue of quality. I mean, think of the 29,000 journals, something like a quarter that sort of dropped off the radar over the because they went back over a period of time and then think only about 4% met the very basic data hygiene requirements but metadata requirements that coalition would expect from journals.
So that's not to say every time a journal is rubbish, but it is to say if you are running journals that are, um, volunteer led are not necessarily run by publishing experts because publishing is a thing, it's a skill set are quite often tucked into additional budgets. So running, being run on a shoestring that will then invite the conversation or question what's good enough. You know, what can we afford a quarter of diamond journals to disappear from the scholarly record over time?
Um, and if not, what are we going to do about it? How do we make sure that there's the skills and the resources put into that sort of publishing to make sure that it's delivering what, what we would need as a community to properly ensure the quality of output. So I think time is a very, very interesting discussion with lots of what ifs and maybes and, and you know, I'd imagine it's sitting at the left hand side of my first chart.
You know, it's still in its early days, and we may have yet to see it grow if indeed it will. Perfect Julia, I would appreciate hearing your perspective on this, but please, please, precise. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just a quick comment that I think builds on what was already said.
I mean, I think, you know, we at frontiers are open to a multiplicity of models, including diamond, as long as they drive a bona fide transformation to open science. Right I think it does need to be acknowledged, however, that quality publishing costs money and requires significant investment. Right? especially because the transition to open science, I think, needs to be done at scale, right?
And so and so in this regard, I think I see, you know, some potential challenges for community based publishing to deliver that kind of scale and technological innovation that is needed for open science today. And I certainly see a role for, you know, professional open science platforms to play in this. I mean, ultimately, you know, I think open access, you know, in an open market is very much about choice, right?
And so both gold and diamond have a role to play in fulfilling this process for I'm sorry, fulfilling this promise of open access, you know, for for, for inclusive growth. Yeah, perfect. Uh, Todd and Megan, please, some quick comments from your book. Um, without just jumping in here because Megan shook her head. And I'll be very brief.
Um, building on what Dan and Julia said, something that I say regularly, um, is there is a difference between publishing something and posting it on the web. And this is not at all to denigrate some University led volunteer led journal. Um, there needs to be in order for us to not live in a digital Dark Age 150 years from now.
There needs to be sustainability. There needs to be preservation, there needs to be migration between this format and future formats. All of those things take resources. And those are what is part of publishing. Distinct from, hey, I just posted on the website. So, um, that's something that I think we really need to maintain focus on in terms of what we're trying to contribute to society.
I'm going to jump in here for a second, Dr. sobhani, where we've got about seven minutes left. So I think we're ready for we've been trying to answer A's offline. So I encourage the speakers to take a look in there if there's anything you'd like to answer. And if we want to move to that, our last question, that would be great. All right.
OK yeah, there are actually a few questions. Oh and we can just look at that. What are the most significant developments? Actually, one of the. One of the stakeholders.
Perhaps he is asking about the peer review process in open access publishing. So the Dom, would you please actually say something on it that or in these days, what peer review process basically is famous and normally considered by the open access journals and the editorial boards and when actually in fact addressing the peer review process.
Sorry, could you repeat the question? Uh, actually, do you want me to read it? Um, Yeah. When considering the costs that go into the editorial and peer review processes, does it cost more for a publisher to publish an open access article than to publish an article behind a paywall? Yeah I don't think I'm the best person to answer that question, but so I'd defer to my, Uh, my colleagues.
Dan put his hand up. Yeah Dan or even Julia or Megan. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean that, that, that whether it's open access in an open access journal or is not the major cost driver. Lots of other things go into cost. There's a huge amount of common ground. You know, you've got to deal with submissions.
You've got to put stuff out to peer review. Depending on the journal, you may do various levels or quantities of editing. All of that stays the same. And then it depends also on your legacy. You know, if you're adding stuff to old systems that can be more complex and expensive than building systems from scratch. So I wouldn't say it probably not is the very short answer.
I defer to my other publishing colleagues. I think Julia. Julia or Megan probably would be best to answer this. It makes sense with everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. Thank you, Dan. Perfect perfect. All right. As as we conclude our discussion, one important question on many minds is how can open access publishing platform contribute to maintaining and promoting research integrity?
And what measures can be implemented to enhance transparency and trust in scholarly communications? I think that I'll be requesting you to please actually address this. Sorry was. Sorry was looking at the text. Which question is this? Yeah actually, you know, basically, how can open access publishing platforms contribute to maintaining and promoting research integrity and what measures can be implemented to enhance transparency and trust in scholarly communications?
Sure we've just entered the second hour of the program. There is so much going on with integrity and trust. I think the key value here has to do with transparency. And Julius mentioned this a couple of times in the process in which the process in which we are going through is much more open than it had been when it comes to pricing, when it comes to the editorial process, there's movements towards open peer review.
This all of another value of an open research ecosystem is that you don't just see the output, you also see the associated data set. You also see the protocols. You also see the, you know, the associated grants. And you can build a network of trust based on being able to see much more than just the artifact that is the paper. And as a benefit of this larger ecosystem, you can build more trust or possibly identify areas in which there are issues and challenges.
I think the fact that we've seen a lot more identification of problems and research integrity also has to do with where's your data, show us your data. And we'll look at your data and be able to identify where maybe image manipulation has happened. And the more you can see, the more likely it is to discern problems with research integrity. Perfect jump.
30s comments on it. And I think Julia wanted to comment as Yeah. All right, Julie. Uh, great. Thank you very much. I'll be. I'll also be quick. I think, you know, research integrity is a big concern for the entire industry, and rightly so.
Right so it is and it should be a concern for all publishers and all, you know, business models, size and just generally of all stripes. Right let's also remember that serious research integrity issues have happened before, open access, before, before, you know, publishing at scale. Right and so I think it's important to kind of push back on the implication that this is necessarily, you know, these issues are necessarily, you know, tied to the open access model here of publishing.
Um, I do, you know, a lot of organizations are responding in a variety of ways. But I want to kind of follow up on what Todd said, particularly about, you know, transparency. I think thinking about open science, open science, not only in terms of access, but also in terms of the data. And one thing that I want to just highlight in my own thoughts here, I think one thing that is needed is accountability in peer review, right?
And so models like transparent peer review I think are tremendously important. That's what frontiers has been doing. But a of other organizations are now also adopting this. I think there's important kind of work to be done around ensuring the transparency of the entire process from from, you know, all parts of that workflow. Right and so we may not always get it right, but we have to keep learning, you know, in this fast evolving requirement environment.
So I think it's really important to think about research integrity holistically here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Dom and Dan and to Megan. You would like to add something? Just a quick note. On open access.
And on the last question, please. Publishing platforms, open access, publishing platforms. Looks like you had something. It looks like we're good and we're at a little over time, so. Yeah, I think so. Thank every Thank you for your participation today, everyone. Thank you so much to our wonderful moderator and our great speakers for sharing your time and your expertise.
Please, if we could ask everyone of the participants to complete the evaluation, you can scan the QR code and we encourage you to provide feedback to help us determine topics and formats for future webinars. Registration is now open for the SSP annual meeting may 29th through 31 in Boston. Early registration ends April 19. Everyone sign up and register. As always, it is surely to be a great conference.
Thank you again to our sponsors. Access innovations, openathens and Silverchair. Today's webinar was recorded and the registrants will receive a link to the recording when it is posted. And that concludes our session today. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Rest of your day.
Very much for having us. For having us. Thank you, everybody.