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Cited by 78Academic Publishing and Open AccessPublishing and Scholarly CommunicationLibrary Science and Information

Is Open Access Affordable? Why Current Models Do Not Work and Why We Need Internet-Era Transformation of Scholarly Communications

Green, Toby·2019·Learned Publishing
DOI 10.1002/leap.1219
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Abstract

Progress to open access (OA) has stalled, with perhaps 20% of new papers ‘born‐free’, and half of all versions of record pay‐walled; why? In this paper, I review the last 12 months: librarians showing muscle in negotiations, publishers’ Read and Publish deals, and funders determined to force change with initiatives like Plan S. I conclude that these efforts will not work. For example, flipping to supply‐side business models, such as article processing charges, simply flips the pay‐wall to a ‘play‐wall’ to the disadvantage of authors without financial support. I argue that the focus on OA makes us miss the bigger problem: today’s scholarly communications is unaffordable with today’s budgets. OA is not the problem, the publishing process is the problem. To solve it, I propose using the principles of digital transformation to reinvent publishing as a two‐step process where articles are published first as preprints, and then, journal editors invite authors to submit only papers that ‘succeed’ to peer review. This would reduce costs significantly, opening a sustainable pathway for scholarly publishing and OA. The catalyst for this change is for the reputation economy to accept preprints as it does articles in minor journals today.

Integrity signals

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Crossref · 10.1002/leap.1219

Cites

51 of 51 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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Authors
Green, T.
Affiliations
Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques (FR)
Corresponding author
Green, Toby
ORCID
Green, Toby
Venue
Learned Publishing
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2019-01
Volume
32
Issue
1
Pages
13-25
ISSN
  • 0953-1513 (ISSN-L)
  • 1741-4857
DOI
10.1002/leap.1219
OpenAlex
W2914881009
Cited by
78
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 1
FWCI
14.81
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor, 23 d)
Locations
Learned Publishing (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Library Science and Information
Keywords
open access, scholarly communication, paywalls, article processing charges, Plan S, preprints, scholarly publishing costs, digital transformation, reputation economy, peer review

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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

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