Triumphs, Tragedies and Tribulations: An Open Access Retrospective

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It is more than 30 years since Stevan Harnad began his first ‘experiment’ with the concept of open access (OA), though of course the movement has gained much greater momentum over the past decade. Open Access week takes place between 21 and 25 October this year. To celebrate, De Gruyter Brill offers a series of blog posts that capture the opinions of librarians from across the world – ever mindful of what OA set out to achieve: to make scholarly publishing free at the point of use so that every scholar and lay person has access, regardless of their financial circumstances. As this year’s Open Access Week renews its call to put community over commercialization, we want to center the views and experiences of academic librarians who sit at the interface of readers, researchers and publishers, and whose expertise will be crucial in further developing “approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community.”

In each post, academic librarians share their thoughts and expertise on how the open access movement has developed until now, the challenges and triumphs of the past and the present, and how they would like to see OA develop in the future. We begin the series with an interview with Sarah Thompson, Assistant Director (Content and Open Research), Library, Archives & Learning Services at the University of York. Sarah has long been an advocate for open research and has participated in many OA initiatives in the UK and beyond. Sarah was interviewed by Linda Bennett of Gold Leaf.

Linda Bennett: To what extent do you think OA has been successful?

Sarah Thompson: There have been major successes: OA publishing is now mainstream for journal articles in many parts of the world, and initiatives like BOAI, Plan S and OA2020 have had significant impact by influencing policy development.

However, there have been missteps along the way. Some funders – with the best of intentions – have incentivized Hybrid and Gold OA models, and this funneled extra revenue to large commercial publishers at the expense of repositories and community infrastructure. High-volume publishing became even more profitable with the rapid acceleration of APC-based models, creating opportunities for predatory publishing and paper mills.

Open access for longform publications has been much slower to take off. There are a variety of reasons for this, but lack of funding for BPCs is a significant one. On balance, this is helpful because it is allowing time for other OA models (such as Diamond) to be explored and developed through initiatives like the Open Book Collective and the Global Diamond Open Access Alliance.

LB: What have been the greatest triumphs and challenges, from your own perspective?

ST: It’s been exciting to see the growth of scholar- and library-led open access publishers. Being involved with one of those – White Rose University Press – has been a particular high point for me. WRUP is a digital, fully open access press run by the university libraries of Leeds, Sheffield and York, publishing peer-reviewed monographs and journals.

“Open access for longform publications has been much slower to take off … on balance this is helpful because it is allowing time for other OA models (such as Diamond) to be explored.”

I think Read & Publish agreements for journals have been both a success and a challenge. Successful because they have resulted in many more articles being published in open access, which has enabled many more authors to experience the benefits of OA while continuing to publish with their favored journals. This has helped, for instance, to begin to bust the myth that open access means lower quality. But these agreements are challenging for financial reasons and have, if anything, amplified the serials crisis; costs can be unaffordable in the short term and unsustainable longer term. As many have noted, there are now paywalls to publish as well as to read. This is not a fair and equitable model, and not the basis for a fair and equitable system of scholarly publishing.

LB: What, if any, have been the unforeseen consequences?

ST: What OA can’t do is magically make every player in the scholarly publishing industry more aligned to the values of academia and less profit-driven. OA has increased the money going into the system and enabled an oligopoly of publishers to become even more dominant. (See also my answer to your first question.)

The 20th Anniversary Recommendations of the Budapest Open Access Initiative address the systemic problems that have affected the development of open access and remind us that open access “is not an end in itself, but a means to further ends. Above all, it is a means to the equity, quality, usability, and sustainability of research.”

“What OA can’t do is magically make every player in the scholarly publishing industry more aligned to the values of academia and less profit-driven. OA has increased the money going into the system and enabled an oligopoly of publishers to become even more dominant.”

LB: To what extent has it truly created a ‘level playing field’ for both authors and readers?

ST: The predominant model of open access has created a level playing field for readers but not authors. Equity and inclusivity is still the main gap. We are trying to move away from a paywalled system which has kept people out and put barriers in place, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that the transition to an open research system is not easy. Any model which is dependent on fee waivers to enable a large proportion of the world to participate cannot be regarded as equitable.

We also need to remember that many researchers working outside universities may not have access to funding to pay publishing charges: health professionals, charities and independent scholars, for example.

The Diamond model of OA has the greatest potential to level the playing field. The Global Diamond Open Access Alliance, announced recently by UNESCO, will hopefully be a pivotal initiative that can affect real change.

LB: Do you think it will ever be possible for all scholarly publishing to become available via this model?

ST: Yes, if commercial interests can be reined in and if research organizations can come together to support the development and maintenance of community infrastructures. It ought to be possible for a number of different OA models to co-exist, ensuring that there is always at least one model that is suitable (and affordable) for a particular subject discipline or research community. But currently the pace of change feels too slow, resulting in costs remaining too high.

LB: How do you think the OA movement will progress in the next five to ten years? How would you like to see it progress, if this is different?

ST: There is clearly a growing awareness of inequities in the scholarly publishing system and a desire from leading OA initiatives such as BOAI and cOAlition S. to address this. We’re starting to see high-level synergies, such as that between the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and the Diamond OA model, result in collaborations such as the Global Diamond Open Access Alliance which I’ve already mentioned.

“I would like to see a greater variety in the way research findings are disseminated, and some alternatives to the journal article and scholarly monograph emerging which help reduce costs in the system.”

One change we really need to see is in the options that academic authors have when deciding where to publish and the factors that influence their decisions. The perceived prestige of some publication venues has significantly inhibited academic appetite for moving away from legacy publishers; there is a concern about research reputation which is proving stubborn to shift.

Open Access Week 2024: Learn more about open access at De Gruyter Brill in our interview with the editorial team of Semiotica.

I would also like to see a greater variety in the way research findings are disseminated. Alternative formats to the journal article and scholarly monograph can help reduce costs in the system.

LB: Is there anything else you would like to add?

ST: I’ve focused on research publications in my answers, so I’d also like to add that Open Educational Resources offer a way forward for teaching materials as viable alternatives to prohibitively expensive textbooks.

LB: Huge thanks for sharing your views and for starting this series with such thoughtful and imaginative insights.

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[Title Image by akinbostanci/iStock/Getty Images]