Open-access in research: Advancements in publication for accessible scientific communication/open science
Research papers, seminars, posters, and conferences are methods for scientists to disseminate their research findings to others. Answering a research question takes millions of dollars and can take from a few months to several years. Hiding valuable information behind paywalls wastes precious time and money dedicated to research. Unfortunately, research papers are scarce outside of institutional settings due to the extremely high cost of subscription fees, which institutions, but not individuals, can afford. This problem has caused a shift in the publishing industry towards open-access publishing to make science publicly available. Recent developments in open-access policy and collaborative work of Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) and Crossref led by academics and interested parties on reference lists are significant strides for open science.
Currently, there is an approximately one-year waiting period for a research article to be made available to the public (1). On August 25, 2022, the US government announced the new open-access policy that will be in effect starting 2026 (1). The Office of Science and Technology Policy advises federal agencies that fund research to make the published results accessible to taxpayers immediately after publication. Previously, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated the one-year waiting period to increase open-access in research, but this is a striking change that will lead to an increase of transparency and accessibility in science. The major impact of open-access publishing is the direct resulting increase in readership. Scientists in low-income countries and individuals that cannot afford the costly subscription fees will have the opportunity to stay up to date on the recent developments in science. Instead of waiting years to access published data, researchers can immediately build up on the published data and will no longer spend time and money on pursuing a path of no avail. Even more importantly, a discovery that can treat a vicious disease will no longer be hindered by paywalls slowing down the progress of research. If a drug showing promising results can be developed sooner because of the new open-access policy, then less people will suffer and more lives will be saved.
It is known that researchers often self-cite in their research arguments as a form of career advancement, and men tend to self-cite more than women (2). Therefore, having transparency in research as well as access to the citation data is crucial to identify and ameliorate malicious research trends in efforts to improve science communication. The problems associated with publishing include overinterpreting the results, falsifying data, and self-citing for career advancement. Another development contributing to the transparency in science is that the I4OC and Crossref made reference lists of over 60 million papers free to access on August 18, 2022 (3). Researchers can now analyze various aspects of references and citation trends without the delay of requesting access from databases. Accessing this citation data freely provides information to scientists on research trends and works towards preventing the occurrence of these problems.
Even though the developments in open-access publishing can bridge the gap between the public and research, the new open-access policy means that libraries and institutions could cancel their subscription to scientific journals, causing a significant loss of revenue. Currently, the cost of publication in an open-access journal is covered by the author (4). However, this is costly and often discourages most authors from choosing to publish in open-access journals. Therefore, with the announcement of the new open-access policy, publishers hope that their loss of subscription fees will be covered by an increase in funding for open access by the government, instead of directly charging the authors for publication.
In 2022, valuable progress has been observed in promoting accessible and transparent research, including the new open-access policy and free citation data published online. While these advancements seem promising for research and publishing, more needs to be done to keep science from being concealed. Moving forward, there might be an increase in the number of open-access journals, as well as more detailed and transparent research articles, and hopefully that will tear down the brickwall gatekeeping scientific research from the public.
Sources
King, M. M., Bergstrom, C. T., Correll, S. J., Jacquet, J., & West, J. D. (2017). Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time. Socius, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117738903
https://sciwriting.blog/what-is-an-open-access-journal-types-costs-pros-and-cons/
