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This study aims to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley between 2015 and 2018. Using publication data from Web of Science, OA status from Unpaywall and annual APC prices from open datasets and historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we estimate that globally authors paid $1.06 billion in publication fees to these publishers from 2015-2018. Revenue from gold OA amounted to $612.5 million, while $448.3 million was obtained for publishing OA in hybrid journals. Among the five publishers, Springer-Nature made the most revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million) and Sage ($31.6 million). With Elsevier and Wiley making most of APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers., Version 3 of the preprint is a revised version of the manuscript submitted to the journal Quantitative Science Studies.

This study aims to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the large commercial publishers Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley, the so-called oligopoly of academic publishing. Since the early 2010s, these five academic publishers control more than half of peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in the Web of Science (WoS), expanding their market power through acquisitions and mergers. While traditionally their business model focused on charging subscriptions to read articles, they have now shifted to OA, charging authors fees for publishing. These APCs often amount to several thousand dollars, excluding many from publishing on economic grounds. This study computes an estimate of the total amounts of APCs paid to oligopoly publishers between 2015 and 2018, using publication data from WoS, OA status from Unpaywall and annual APC prices from open datasets and historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. We estimate that globally authors paid the oligopoly of academic publishers $1.06 billion in publication fees in the 4-year period analyzed. Of the 505,903 OA articles analyzed, 60.9% were published in gold OA journals, 8.6% in diamond (gold with APC=$0) and 30.5% in hybrid journals. Revenue from gold OA amounted to $612.5 million, while $448.3 million was obtained for publishing OA in hybrid journals, for which publishers already charge subscription fees. Among the five publishers, Springer-Nature made the largest revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million) and Sage ($31.6 million). With Elsevier and Wiley making the majority of APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers.

This presentation sharesfindings from a study thatestimates fees paid for gold and hybrid open access articles in journals published by the oligopoly of academic publishers, which acknowledge funding from the Canadian Tri-Agency. It employs bibliometric methods using data from Web of Science, Unpaywall, open datasets of article processing charges list prices as well as historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine for journals published by Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Wiley, Sage and Taylor & Francis to estimate article processing charges for open access articles published between 2015 and 2018 that acknowledge funding from the Canadian Federal funding agencies CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, as well as grants jointly administered by the Tri-Agency. During the four-year period analyzed, a total of 6,892 gold and 4,097 hybrid articles that acknowledge Tri-Agency funding were identified, for which the total list prices amount to $US 27.6 million.

Geographical and income level analyses have shown that gold OA journals tend to be much more expensive in the Western world and in richer countries compared to other regions where APCs are generally much cheaper and skewed by a minority of expensive journals (Figure4). Despite that, APCs often dominate the conversation regarding the sustainability and affordability of OA publishing. However, this ignores the funding models that the vast majority of DOAJ listed journals (71%) are using as they do not charge APCs. These diamond journals have also increased at a higher rate than their APC-based counterparts. Differences in the adoption of diamond OA may be observed between regions with Latin America achieving close to 100% diamond OA through regional initiatives such as the SciELO platform. While problems related to the perceived quality of diamond journals persist among researchers, our results shows that the Western APC-based way to do OA does not have to be the only way for researchers.&nbsp

Le libre accès est un processus qui vise à rendre les résultats de recherche disponibles gratuitement en ligne, permettant de lire, télécharger, copier, distribuer, imprimer, rechercher ou partager leur contenu, sans barrière légale ou technique. Le mouvement a récemment gagné de l’ampleur avec l’implémentation de politiques de libre accès par les organismes subventionnaires et le développement de plateformes facilitant la diffusion de la science telles que l’Open Journal System, Érudit et SciELO. Actuellement, des études estiment que près de la moitié des articles scientifiques sont disponibles en ligne gratuitement. À ce jour, plusieurs aspects du libre accès ont été abordés dans la littérature scientifique tels que la disponibilité des articles, l’avantage en termes de citations des articles en libre accès et les effets des politiques de libre accès. Cependant, peu de chercheurs ont abordé l’utilisation du libre accès à l’échelle mondiale. L’objectif de ce mémoire de maîtrise est de fournir un portrait à jour de l’adoption du libre accès à l’échelle globale selon deux indicateurs, soit le nombre de publications en libre accès et le nombre de références faites aux articles en libre accès. Nos résultats montrent que les pays pauvres publient et utilisent davantage la recherche en libre accès que les autres pays, tandis que les pays ayant un revenu intermédiaire de la classe supérieure se comportent d’une façon semblable aux pays riches. Ces résultats démontrent l’importance des initiatives pour la promotion du libre accès à l’échelle locale, nationale et internationale, particulièrement pour les pays de la classe de revenu intermédiaire où les infrastructures et le nombre de mandats de libre accès sont limités., Open Access (OA) is a process that aims to make research output freely available on the public internet, allowing the users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text without any financial, legal or technical barrier. OA has often been suggested as a potential solution to several problems related to the scientific publishing industry: a minority of for profit editors accounting for half of the entire publishing industry, important budget cuts and rising subscription prices in academic libraries, and access to knowledge in lower-income countries. The OA movement originated from the growing demand to make research more accessible worldwide. It has been gaining a lot of momentum, with the implementation of several OA policies by funding institutions and the development of several new platforms (e.g., Open Journal System, African Journals Online, SciELO, and Érudit) that facilitate the publication of OA content at low cost. Studies have shown that between 20% and 50% of research articles are currently available online at no cost, but only a few have compared the use of OA literature at the country level and from a worldwide perspective. Along these lines, this master’s thesis aims to provide a global picture of the current state of OA adoption by countries, using two indicators: publications in OA and references to articles in OA. We find that, on average, low-income countries are publishing and citing OA at the highest rate, while upper-middle income countries and higher income countries publish and cite OA articles at below world-average rates. These results highlight national differences in OA uptake and suggest that more OA initiatives at the institutional, national and international levels are needed to support a wider adoption of open scholarship.