On the Fast Track to Full Gold Open Access

TL;DR

The paper addresses the worry that a rapid shift to Gold Open Access could create affordability and equity issues in scholarly publishing. It employs a state-of-the-art bibliometric review and Scopus-based trends to compare OA and Subscription Access, evaluate publishing models, and assess potential impacts. The key contributions include a synthesis of Gold OA, Hybrid OA, and Diamond OA, an analysis of Article Processing Charges with ranges such as $15$ to $10183$ dollars (mean $2987$, SD $1352$), and three coexisting strategic models for sustainable open science. The work highlights the practical significance of balancing publishing models to preserve meritocracy and accessibility, particularly amid global disruptions and a likely near-future shift toward broader Open Access adoption, potentially around $100 ext{\%}$ Gold OA by $2025/2026$ if not managed carefully.$

Abstract

The world of scientific publishing is changing; the days of an old type of subscription-based earnings for publishers seem over, and we are entering a new era. It seems as if an ever-increasing number of journals from disparate publishers are going Gold, Open Access that is, yet have we rigorously ascertained the issue in its entirety, or are we touting the strengths and forgetting about constructive criticism and careful weighing of evidence? We will therefore present the current state of the art, in a compact review/bibliometrics style, of this more relevant than ever hot topic, including challenges and potential solutions that are most likely to be acceptable to all parties. Suggested solutions, as per the performed analysis, at least for the time being, represent an inclusive publishing environment where multiple publishing models are competing for a piece of the pie and thus inhibiting each other's flaws. The performed analysis also shows that there seems to be a link between trends in scientific publishing and tumultuous world events, which in turn has a special significance for the publishing environment in the current world stage -- implying that academy publishing has potentially now found itself at a tipping point of change.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Open Access (OA) and Subscription Access (SA) Documents by Publication Year: The last two years obviously do not have a complete dataset. Data was acquired from Scopus, which is the "world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature" Elsevier2023a. No filter was set on document type, and as such, this is a complete and up-to-date outlook. Up until recently, SA publishing has commanded a substantial lead, yet the steady and especially recent explosion of OA documents has placed both publishing models close to one another. Such a steep growth in OA publishing has, from ca. 2013, produced, it seems, a standstill in the SA model; however, from ca. 2021, the OA model has perhaps reached its peak as well, although it is still too soon to tell. Notwithstanding such an instance, it seems that we are at a tipping point, at a crossroads from which we will see a different turn of events. For a historical and more in-depth overview, one should consult section \ref{['sec7']} of the article. Documents for the year 2024 are the ones with a planned date.
• Figure 2: Open Access (OA) and Subscription Access (SA) Documents by Publication Year---Part One, from 1865 to 1924. Data was acquired from Scopus, which is the "world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature" Elsevier2023a. No filter was set on document type, and as such, this is a complete and up-to-date outlook.
• Figure 3: Open Access (OA) and Subscription Access (SA) Documents by Publication Year---Part Two, from 1917 to 1947. Data was acquired from Scopus, which is the "world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature" Elsevier2023a. No filter was set on document type, and as such, this is a complete and up-to-date outlook.
• Figure 4: Open Access (OA) and Subscription Access (SA) Documents by Publication Year---Part Three, from 1940 to 1993. Data was acquired from Scopus, which is the "world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature" Elsevier2023a. No filter was set on document type, and as such, this is a complete and up-to-date outlook.
• Figure 5: Open Access (OA) and Subscription Access (SA) Documents by Publication Year---Part Four, from 1990 to 2024. Data was acquired from Scopus, which is the "world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature" Elsevier2023a. No filter was set on document type, and as such, this is a complete and up-to-date outlook. Documents for the year 2024 are the ones with a planned date.