Open Access Publishing Challenges

Challenges in Open Access

• Universities face challenges in sustaining open access funds due to increasing demands for open access fees.
• Some institutions have opted to explore alternative options, such as investing in transformative agreements.

Institutional Repositories

• Institutional repositories emerged as a convergence of three factors: archiving faculty research, alleviating concerns with traditional subscription-based publishing, and utilizing digital networks and publishing technologies.
• The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) reports a global count of 5,888 repositories (as of July 2022), encompassing various subject areas.

Predatory Publishing

• Predatory publishing has been influenced by policies set forth by government agencies and research funders.
• Government agencies and research funders have the authority to enforce open access mandates and cover costs through grant funds, alleviating the burden from individual authors or university open access funds.

Open Access Mandates

• The mid-2000s saw the rapid implementation of numerous mandates, which have been periodically updated over time.
• Funder policies related to open access can be found in Sherpa Juliet.

Preprints

• Preprints are versions of articles intended to be published, but have yet to undergo formal peer-review.
• SSRN (formerly the Social Science Research Network) was launched in 1994 as a repository for preprints and became financially self-sustaining through advertising.

Electronic Publishing

• Commercial publishers converted to electronic publishing but identified that fixed costs of publishing (such as manuscript processing, editorial review, copy-editing, XML coding, marketing, etc.) represent 70-80% of total publishing costs.
• Digital publishing was not providing relief for the Serials Crisis.

SPARC and Open Access

• The Association of Research Libraries launched the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in 1998 to enhance broad and cost-effective access to peer-reviewed scholarship.
• SPARC Europe was launched in 2001.

Peer Review and Recognition

• There is an imbalance in peer-review capacity, with a small number of reviewers handling the majority of reviews, further concealing predatory journals.
• Peer-Review Week was established in 2015 to recognize reviewers' vital contributions to the research process.

University Support for Open Access

• Universities have demonstrated significant support for the open access movement through institutional repositories, open access mandates, and open access funds.
• Universities have also implemented open access mandates to encourage faculty engagement.
• Open access funds, provided by universities, have become necessary to support scholars who wish to publish in open access journals but lack financial backing from funding agencies.

Explore the challenges faced by universities in sustaining open access funds and the role of institutional repositories in open access publishing. Learn about alternative options and the convergence of factors leading to institutional repositories.