[Image above] Credit: Nenad Stojkovic, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
If tax money is used to fund a research experiment, should the people whose taxes funded that research be allowed immediate, free access to the results? That question is at the center of a debate stretching back decades over the use of subscription-restricted access by scholarly publishing houses.
On Aug. 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy gave their stance on this question by releasing new policy guidance regarding the publishing of federally funded (i.e., taxpayer-funded) research.
Previous policy guidance released in 2013 mandated scholarly publishers make federally funded research publicly available after a maximum 12-month embargo period. The new policy guidance recommends that publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research be made immediately free and accessible to the public without an embargo period starting Jan. 1, 2026.
To better contextualize this decision and the response by scholarly publishers, below is a brief history of the evolution of scholarly publishing and the push for open access.
The evolution of scholarly publishing
An article by San Francisco-based data marketing company Priceonomics on the use of subscription-restricted access in scientific publishing explains that prior to the 17th century, science was a more individualistic rather than collaborative pursuit. Sharing the findings of an experiment too early could allow a competitor to steal an invention and its economic benefits. So, scientists often would wait until they had enough ideas to publish a whole book, or they would write letters only to trusted colleagues about their studies.
In the middle of the 17th century, scholarly societies such as the Royal Society (founded in 1660) and the French Academy of Sciences (founded in 1666) created a forum for the exchange of scientific ideas, and science research became a more collaborative affair. These societies started publishing scholarly journals as an efficient way to share the findings of their members, whose research was largely funded by wealthy patrons.
As the journals market became more formalized, publishers were still, for the most part, nonprofits and often associated with research institutions. Even up until the mid-20th century, profits were low and private publishers were rare because the main goal of scholarly journals was dissemination of knowledge rather than profit.
However, as universities replaced academies as the dominant scientific institution—and scientists began relying on more complex and expensive instruments to conduct research—governments replaced individual patrons as the biggest subsidizers of scientific research. At the same time, journals transitioned from being simply a way to share findings to taking on a marker of prestige.
In the 1960s and 1970s, large commercial scholarly publishers started to form. They bought scholarly journals from the societies that originally ran them, and they began operating the journals as a for-profit enterprise.
Today, the scholarly journal industry is dominated by five large, for-profit publishing houses: Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, and SAGE, which together publish more than 50% of the scholarly articles published each year. Elsevier is the largest, accounting for 18% of global research output while garnering a 26% share of citations.
The push for open access
In the early 2000s, libraries around the world started raising concerns about a “serials crisis,” i.e., chronic increases in the subscription costs of many serial publications, particularly scholarly journals, which increased much faster than inflation.
For example, from 1984 to 2001, the price of library subscriptions to physical science periodicals rose by 615%, a period when the overall price increases as reflected by the consumer price index was 70%.
Two decades later, the high cost of journal subscriptions remains a challenge for libraries. These increasing costs have contributed to the growing calls for a reimagined scholarly publishing system based on open access.
Open access is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. It is a core component of the open science movement, which envisions a research ecosystem based on cooperative work and use of digital tools to “remove the barriers for sharing any kind of output, resources, methods or tools, at any stage of the research process,” according to the open science e-learning platform FOSTER portal.
The open science movement received a boost in 2020 as governments, companies, and universities harnessed data sharing and open-source designs for medical equipment to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The OSTP memorandum even cites lessons learned from the pandemic as justification for open access to scientific literature.
“Immediate public access to COVID-19 research is a powerful case study on the benefits of delivering research results and data rapidly to the people. The insights of new and cutting-edge research stemming from the support of federal agencies should be immediately available—not just in moments of crisis, but in every moment. Not only to fight a pandemic, but to advance all areas of study, including urgent issues such as cancer, clean energy, economic disparities, and climate change,” the memo says.
However, while open access in theory sounds good for broadening public access to taxpayer-funded research, open access in practice often results in the cost of publishing being shifted from the consumers to the authors through “article processing charges,” which are fees paid by an article’s authors to cover a scholarly publishing house’s operation costs in lieu of a subscription. (See sidebar: “Green” versus “gold” open access.)
These article processing charges can be substantial and may pose a barrier for authors in low- and middle-income countries.
“One of the great ironies of open access is that you grant authors around the world the ability to finally read the scientific literature that was completely closed off to them, but it ends up excluding them from publishing in the same journals,” says Emilio Bruna, an ecologist and scholar of Latin American studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville, in a Nature news article.
In addition, there are concerns that paying a journal its operation costs upfront removes the financial incentives to ensure appropriate peer review and quality control. In 2013, Science correspondent John Bohannon illustrated this concern with his article “Who’s afraid of peer review?” He generated a fake scholarly article with content devoid of scientific meaning and with obvious errors and omissions. The study was sent to more than 300 open-access journals, and more than 150 of them accepted it for publication with virtually no signs of quality control or peer review.
“Green” versus “gold” open access
There are varying levels of open-access content. “Green” and “gold” open access are the main models used by scholarly publishing houses to allow consumers free access to content.
“Green” open-access journals maintain a subscription-based publishing framework but allow authors to archive a penultimate, accepted version of their paper in a separate free repository. Examples of free repositories can be seen here.
“Gold” open-access journals require authors to cover the costs of publication through an article processing charge (mentioned in the main article), and the journal publishes a freely accessible final version on their website.
Despite these obstacles, the open-access concept is attracting a lot of attention from governments and research funding agencies worldwide (see plans by the international consortium cOAlition S and science funder UK Research and Innovation as examples). Publishers have been responding by, among other programs, entering transformational agreements such as Projekt DEAL.
As these complicated agreements often take years to negotiate, the transition needs to be gradual to keep from presenting new barriers to publishing or devaluing the publishing process.
OSTP’s memo and response by scholarly publishers
Considering the many factors that influence the transition from a subscription-based to open-access-based publishing model, the recent OSTP mandate that federally funded research be made publicly accessible by no later than 2026 has led to concern among publishers.
“Many publishers have increased the speed and efficiency of the publication process, … This important work is part of a competitive marketplace geared towards excellence; it is very different than the government mandating business models,” says Shelley Husband, senior vice president of government affairs at the Association of American Publishers, in a news statement on the OSTP memo. “How will publishers, especially small publishers, sustain the accuracy, quality, and output that the public interest requires?”
In an economic analysis published alongside the memorandum, OSTP argues that, due to technological advancements and social shifts since 2013, requiring immediate access to publications and data will not unduly disrupt the scholarly publishing ecosystem. However, it does acknowledge that funding agencies would need additional funds from Congress to cover publication fees without diverting funds from current activities, as most agencies “currently do not explicitly set aside dedicated funding for these costs.”
There are quite a few details that OSTP will need to clarify for scholarly publishers. A special single-topic issue of The Brief column by management consulting firm Clarke & Esposito points out some of these details, including that the memo language specifies “public” access, not “open” access.
“As defined by OSTP and federal agencies, that means the papers and the data must be made publicly available, but without any reuse license requirements (e.g., CC BY licenses that allow liberal reuse and repurposing). … It is possible that there could be specific license requirements at the agency level,” the column explains.
In addition, the memo does not clearly specify which version of a paper this policy will apply to—the author accepted manuscript or the final, published version of record. Plus, it is unknown if papers and data from existing grants will be subject to the new requirements, or if the new policy will take effect with grants issued after Jan. 1, 2026.
“Each society’s or publisher’s situation is different, and careful analysis of the specifics is required to develop an appropriate set of strategies and tactics,” the column concludes. “Reviewing the size and construction of one’s portfolio, funding sources for published papers, and metrics like revenue per article published and revenue per submission received can guide strategy.”
The effect of OSTP’s guidance on university and society publishers
When open-access proponents advocate for a transition away from subscription-based publishing models, these discussions often take place in the context of its effects on large, for-profit publishing houses. However, it is important to consider how any implemented changes will affect nonprofit journals run by universities and professional societies.
In an article on The Scholarly Kitchen discussing the effects of the recent OSTP memo, American Society of Clinical Oncology vice president of publishing Angela Cochran notes the difficulties that university and society publishers will face switching to a fully open-access model.
“Lastly, highly selective journals will have a hard time ‘flipping’ to OA [open access] and allowing Green with no embargo is a non-starter. Many journals in this category are society journals and they invite a lot of content. Some of this content are the most-read articles in the journals, as they provide context and important commentary on the latest research. This is not content for which an APC [article processing charge] can be collected, and a lot of it is currently free to read.
… OA journals operate on a volume model for obvious reasons. This doesn’t work for selective journals. And while some OA publishers have kept somewhat selective OA journals afloat, they do so by supporting them through also having OA journals that are not very selective. Many societies differentiate themselves (fairly or not) from the commercial journals by promising high quality and highly vetted impactful content. Having a less selective OA journal is a philosophical hurdle.
The effects of the pandemic, increasing labor costs, and continuing consolidation that is driving up publishing costs already has smaller and society publishers scrambling. The timing of this OSTP policy shift is going to be another tough pill to swallow, and I have no doubt that some smaller organizations won’t make it.”
– Angela Cochran, American Society of Clinical Oncology
To mitigate some of these risks, many societies have teamed up with major publishers to help run their journals. ACerS, for example, partners with Wiley on its four journals to help handle the production and business aspects of publishing.