Open Access - What Percentage Of Research Is Published Open Access?

Open access (OA) refers to a set of principles and a set of procedures that allow research findings to be distributed online, free of charge or other access obstacles. According to a 2017 Max Planck Society survey, the percentage of gold access articles in pure open access journals is roughly 13% of all research publications.

Open access (OA) growth under Creative Commons (CC) licences is declining, but it is still in the double digits and much above the underlying journal market. Annual growth in both volume and value of OA is 10%.

The money generated by hybrid articles is more than that generated by completely open access journals, although the gap is closing. Those for publications in completely open access journals appear to be increasing with time, whilst those for hybrid journals appear to be flattening. This might be due in part to how revenues are divided in mixed-model arrangements.

What Is Considered Open Access?

Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free, and unrestricted by most copyright and licence limitations. The internet and the author's or copyright holder's permission make it feasible." The "peer reviewed scientific literature" is the primary focus of the open access movement.

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Historically, this has mostly focused on print-based scholarly periodicals. Unlike traditional (non-open access) journals, which cover publication expenses through access tolls such as subscriptions, site licencing, or pay-per-view charges, open-access journals have financing methods that do not require the reader to pay to see the journal's contents or rely on public support.

Open access may be used to all types of published research output, including peer-reviewed and unreviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, monographs, research reports, and photographs. Because open access journals rely on author publishing fees for funding, there are worries regarding the quality of articles published in OA journals.

Open Access Market Size

In 2019, the open access market is expected to grow to around $763 million. The increase of 13 percent over the previous year is more than the growth in the underlying academic journals market, which is normally in the low to mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis.

The data trends imply that the growth rate in open access has been declining in recent years and will continue to decline in the next years to about 12 percent yearly, but that it will remain above the underlying market rates over this time period. The open access sector is expected to generate more than $850 million in revenue by 2020.

The paid-for open access publication of scholarly articles accounts for little more than 30% of all scholarly articles published, accounting for slightly more than 7% of the overall journal publishing market value. It was projected that open access output would increase by over 10.5 percent, and open access market value would increase by 11.5 percent.

Open Access Publishing - Future Trend

Based on existing patterns, the open access industry is expected to develop much faster than the underlying academic publication market. When considering any CC licence, open access output now accounts for at least 30% of articles, however this figure reduces dramatically when just the most liberal licences are included.

Similarly, if we count anything that is available to read (but not necessarily to reuse), we can see that more over half of the output is open. The share of money spent on open access continues to trail behind the proportion of production, although it is making progress. It is mostly driven by growing output levels, while price strategies might assist generate income for some.

The motivations of huge deal cancellations, the rise of transformational agreements, and maybe the nascent expansion of non-APC-based subscription models will continue to boost open access investment. Subscription access payments will unavoidably be reduced, and completely open access activity is capturing a growing amount of value. Meanwhile, many locations of the world with high OA use have low GDP, implying that their impact on global payment averages is modest.

Outside of Europe and North America, funder requirements, transformational agreements, and deal cancellations may have less of an influence on the OA environment. The reality on the ground may differ from the mathematical models we utilise. When OA adoption in the vanguard regions hits saturation, we may observe a major slowing of OA development while the other regions exhibit weaker drivers.

Furthermore, our models do not take COVID-19 into consideration. Anecdotally, we know that several journals' submissions and publications have grown in the last seven months. However, approval rates for these applications are frequently reported to be significantly lower than typical.

Most publishers who were cautiously anticipating a submission slowdown have not yet seen it. Even if the research slowdown does not materialise, the impacts of a falling GDP may reduce publication income regardless of business strategy.

About The Authors

Suleman Shah - Suleman Shah is a researcher and freelance writer. As a researcher, he has worked with MNS University of Agriculture, Multan (Pakistan) and Texas A & M University (USA). He regularly writes science articles and blogs for science news website immersse.com and open access publishers OA Publishing London and Scientific Times. He loves to keep himself updated on scientific developments and convert these developments into everyday language to update the readers about the developments in the scientific era. His primary research focus is Plant sciences, and he contributed to this field by publishing his research in scientific journals and presenting his work at many Conferences. Shah graduated from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad (Pakistan) and started his professional carrier with Jaffer Agro Services and later with the Agriculture Department of the Government of Pakistan. His research interest compelled and attracted him to proceed with his carrier in Plant sciences research. So, he started his Ph.D. in Soil Science at MNS University of Agriculture Multan (Pakistan). Later, he started working as a visiting scholar with Texas A&M University (USA). Shah’s experience with big Open Excess publishers like Springers, Frontiers, MDPI, etc., testified to his belief in Open Access as a barrier-removing mechanism between researchers and the readers of their research. Shah believes that Open Access is revolutionizing the publication process and benefitting research in all fields.