2025/05/19 by María José Luzón · 1 voice
Decision Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Academic Publishing and Open Access #Publishing and Scholarly Communication #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · doi:10.1515/9783110672633-036
openalex publication_date 2025/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Open access (OA) publishing is gaining momentum because of the opportunity for easy and low-cost dissemination of science offered by online platforms and concerns about the high subscription costs of traditional journals that make it difficult for some researchers to access research findings. Open access is part of the broader open science movement, which seeks to make science more transparent, efficient, credible, and accessible to all users. However, although providing open access to research is a desirable goal, it has broad implications for stakeholders (i.e., academics, publishers, scientific societies, librarians) in developed and developing countries. In this chapter I discuss the main issues involved in open access publishing: the drivers of OA, its academic, economic, and societal benefits, and the obstacles and opposition to OA; the different types of OA publications and their associated business models, ranging from those where the costs of publication are paid by authors or institutions to “black OA”; the experience of open access publishers (e.g., PLOS); questionable publishing practices associated with OA, such as predatory journals. Special attention will be paid to the issue of OA and equity and to whether OA discriminates some scholars (e.g., scholars in the Global South). The chapter will conclude with the outlook for open access publications, considering initiatives like Plan S.