For many years, one of the most common criticisms of academic publishing was that research was locked behind paywalls. Researchers conducted the work, often using public funding. Universities paid salaries, provided laboratories and supported the research process. Yet when the work was published, access was frequently restricted to those institutions that could afford (arguably expensive) journal subscriptions.
Some argued that if knowledge is created for the benefit of society, should it not be accessible to all of society? The open access model emerged. By making the results freely available, barriers to access could be removed and knowledge could be shared more widely. Researchers, practitioners, policymakers and the public would all benefit from unrestricted access to scholarly work.
It was, and remains, an attractive vision, although not without his critics, which I won’t dwell on in this edition. However, as open access becomes increasingly established, it may be worth asking a different question. Have we solved the access problem, or have we simply moved it?
The Original Access Problem
The subscription model, sometimes called the traditional model, was straightforward. Readers, libraries and institutions paid for access to journals. Publishers generated revenue through subscriptions, and those who could not afford access were excluded from the latest research.
This created obvious inequities. Researchers at well-funded universities enjoyed access to journals that were not available to (many) others. Those at smaller institutions, in developing countries or working independently often faced significant barriers. Even practitioners outside academia could struggle to access research that might inform their work. This might include journalists and R&D personnel in corporate organisations.
The open-access movement challenged this model. Rather than charging readers, the idea was that articles would be made freely available online, ensuring that anyone with an internet connection could access research findings.
The principle was difficult to argue against, with one argument being, what value is there in creating knowledge if large parts of society cannot access it?
The Rise of the Article Processing Charge
The challenge though is that publishing research still costs money. Editorial systems must be maintained. Articles must be processed, typeset, archived and distributed. Staff must be employed and infrastructure must be supported.
To support the open access model, many publishers adopted Article Processing Charges (APCs) as a way of covering these costs. Under this model, readers no longer pay to access articles. Instead, authors pay to publish them.
At first glance, this may appear to be a fair trade. Knowledge becomes freely available to everyone, while the costs of publication are absorbed by research grants, institutions or authors themselves.
Yet this shift raises an important question. If readers are no longer facing barriers to access, are authors now facing barriers to publish?
A Different Type of Paywall
In some disciplines, APCs can amount to several thousand dollars per article. Charges of USD 3,000, USD 5,000 are not unusual. In some cases, APCs now exceed USD 10,000 per article. For researchers with substantial grant funding, these costs may be manageable. For others, they may not be.
Early-career researchers, scholars from less well-funded institutions, independent researchers and academics working in lower-income countries may face a very different reality.
They may be able to read almost any article they wish, at least published under the OA model. Publishing their own work, however, may be significantly more challenging. The result is a system where access to knowledge has expanded, but participation in knowledge creation may remain constrained by financial resources.
The question is not whether open access is desirable. The question is whether we have fully considered who bears the cost.
A University Leader’s Perspective
Just to give my personal viewpoint. In the university I currently lead, we subscribe to a limited number of resources, and these are mainly to support our teaching. If colleagues want to conduct research, they face two challenges. Firstly, many articles are still behind a (traditional model) paywall and, secondly, we do not fund APC so, if/when we publish, we have to publish in traditional (or more likely these days, hybrid) journals. To a university such as mine, the OA model, combined with APCs has made life more difficult, not easier.
The Equity Challenge
Supporters of APC-based publishing often point out that many publishers offer waivers and discounts. This is true, and such schemes undoubtedly help many researchers. However, waivers also introduce their own questions. Who qualifies? How transparent is the process?
Are researchers comfortable requesting financial assistance simply to publish their work? And, if they get (say) a 50% discount on a USD 2,500 APC, they still have to find USD 1,250. Where does that come from?
More fundamentally, should access to publishing depend on the availability of waivers at all?
If the goal of scholarly communication is to maximise the dissemination of knowledge, then ensuring equitable opportunities to contribute may be just as important as ensuring equitable opportunities to read.
A system that is open to readers but difficult for some researchers may not be fully achieving its intended objectives.
Following the Incentives
The growth of APC-funded publishing also raises questions about incentives. Under a subscription model, publishers generated revenue from readers and institutions. Under an APC model, revenue is closely linked to the number of articles published.
This observation is not a criticism of publishers, nor does it imply that quality standards are compromised. However, it does highlight an important governance question.
Whenever revenue becomes connected to volume, incentives inevitably change. Understanding those incentives and ensuring that they remain aligned with research quality and integrity, is a responsibility shared by publishers, institutions and the wider research community.
As I have argued in previous editions, many of the challenges we see in scholarly publishing emerge when measures, incentives and objectives become misaligned. The same principle may apply here.
Is There an Alternative?
The difficulty with this debate is that there are no easy alternatives. Many would argue against returning to a system where access to knowledge is restricted by expensive subscription barriers.
Open access has undoubtedly increased the visibility and accessibility of research. Many articles that would previously have been available only to subscribers can now be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world. That is a significant.
However, concerns about APCs continue to grow. If publication costs continue to rise, we may simply be replacing one form of exclusion with another. There is also an argument that APCs rise with the quality (e.g. quartile of the journal), rather than the cost to publish. If this is the case, it means that researchers who cannot afford APCs are being priced out of the market, and cannot publish in the best journals.
The challenge for the academic community is therefore not to choose between access and affordability. It is to find models that deliver both.
A Question Worth Asking
Twenty years ago, the debate focused on whether readers should have to pay to access research. Today, perhaps the more important question is whether authors should increasingly have to pay to contribute to it.
Open access has transformed scholarly communication and brought undeniable benefits. Yet as the model evolves, we should be willing to ask difficult questions about its unintended consequences.
After all, if the goal is to create a system that is fair, accessible and sustainable, then removing one paywall only to create another may not be the solution we hoped for.
What do you think? Have we solved the access problem in academic publishing, or have we simply moved the paywall from the reader to the author?
About the Author
Professor Graham Kendall is Vice-Chancellor of GlobalNxt University, Malaysia, and an Emeritus Professor of the University of Nottingham. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and has over 25 years of experience in research, academic leadership and scholarly publishing.
Through Publishing with Integrity, he explores the challenges facing modern research and academic publishing, including research integrity, publication ethics, research evaluation, artificial intelligence and the governance of scholarly communication.