Open Access and Open Science

What is the state of open access and open science? How can we move toward a world where research is readily available to all?

Although interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature is growing, relatively little is known about the prevalence, characteristics, and implications of this emerging body of work. Does openness affect citation impact? What percentage of scholarly literature is currently OA, and has this changed in recent years? How have digital advances changed the nature of scholarly publishing? 

To better understand today’s changing academic publishing landscape, we are investigating these questions and more in a series of large-scale, collaborative projects. By analyzing data from a wide swath of journals, academic disciplines, online platforms, and publishing strategies, we seek to improve existing knowledge on the current state of OA and help dismantle the barriers that stand in the way of achieving greater openness.  

Related Publications

Haustein, S., Schares, E., Alperin, J. P., Hare, M., Butler, L.-A., & Schönfelder, N. (2024). Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 (No. arXiv:2407.16551). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.16551 Download
van Bellen, S., Alperin, J. P., & Larivière, V. (2024). The oligopoly of academic publishers persists in exclusive database (No. arXiv:2406.17893). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.17893 Download
Butler, L.-A., Hare, M., Schönfelder, N., Schares, E., Alperin, J. P., & Haustein, S. (2024). An open dataset of article processing charges from six large scholarly publishers (2019-2023) (No. arXiv:2406.08356). arXiv. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.08356 Download
Butler, L.-A., Hare, M., Schönfelder, N., Schares, E., Alperin, J. P., & Haustein, S. (2024). Open dataset of annual Article Processing Charges (APCs) of gold and hybrid journals published by Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer-Nature and Wiley 2019-2023. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CR1MMV
Hare, M., Haustein, S., & Butler, L.-A. (2024). Call for papers: Current issues in scholarly publishing. The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 47(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjils-rcsib.v47i1.18648 Download
Alperin, J. P., Portenoy, J., Demes, K., Larivière, V., & Haustein, S. (2024). An analysis of the suitability of OpenAlex for bibliometric analyses (No. arXiv:2404.17663). arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.17663 Download
Simard, M.-A., Butler, L.-A., Alperin, J. P., & Haustein, S. (2024). We need to rethink the way we identify diamond open access journals in quantitative science studies. SciELO Preprints. https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.8272
Butler, L.-A., Matthias, L., Simard, M.-A., Mongeon, P., & Haustein, S. (2023). The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access. How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges. Quantitative Science Studies, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00272 Download
Butler, L.-A. (2023). Funding the business of open access: a bibliometric analysis of article processing charges, research funding, and the revenues of the oligopoly of publishers [Thesis, Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa]. https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-28896 Download
Cobey, K. D., Haustein, S., Brehaut, J., Dirnagl, U., Franzen, D. L., Hemkens, L. G., Presseau, J., Riedel, N., Strech, D., Alperin, J. P., Costas, R., Sena, E. S., van Leeuwen, T., Ardern, C. L., Bacellar, I. O. L., Camack, N., Britto Correa, M., Buccione, R., Cenci, M. S., … Moher, D. (2023). Community consensus on core open science practices to monitor in biomedicine. PLOS Biology, 21(1), e3001949. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001949 Download
Khanna, S., Ball, J., Alperin, J. P., & Willinsky, J. (2022). Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process. Quantitative Science Studies, 3(4), 912–930. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00228 Download
Alperin, J. P. (2022). Why I think ending article-processing charges will save open access. Nature, 610(7931), 233–233. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03201-w Download
Haustein, S., Cobey, K., Neylon, C., Riedel, N., Franzen, D., Alperin, J. P., Dirnagl, U., & Moher, D. (2022, September 7). User-centred design in indicator development: Involving the biomedical community in building an open science dashboard. Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators. International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators, Granada, Spain. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.6948166
Cobey, K. D., Haustein, S., Brehaut, J., Dirnagl, U., Franzen, D. L., Hemkens, L. G., Presseau, J., Riedel, N., Strech, D., Alperin, J. P., Costas, R., Sena, E. S., van Leeuwen, T., Ardern, C. L., Bacellar, I. O. L., Camack, N., Correa, M. B., Buccione, R., Cenci, M. S., … Moher, D. (2022). Establishing a core set of open science practices in biomedicine: a modified Delphi study [Preprint]. Health Policy. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.27.22276964 Download
Maron, Nancy, Alperin, Juan Pablo, & Shockey, Nick. (2021). COVID impact survey: better understanding libraries’ approach to navigating the  pandemic & its impact on  support for open initiatives. https://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SPARC-COVID-Impact-Survey-092021.pdf
Reilly, K. M. A., & Alperin, J. P. (2021). A stewardship approach to theorizing open data for development. In Open Data for Development. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11480.001.0001
Barata, G. (2021). Open Science for editors II. In Elisabete Werlang & Paulo Eduardo Carlim (Eds.), Desafios e perspectivas da editoria científica (pp. 133–144). Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos (ABEC Brasil). https://doi.org/10.21452/abec.2021.isbn.978-65-993452-1-0.cap12 Download
Laakso, M., Matthias, L., & Jahn, N. (2020). Open is not forever: a study of vanished open access journals. ArXiv:2008.11933 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2008.11933 Download
Alperin, J. P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L. A., Fischman, G. E., Niles, M. T., & McKiernan, E. C. (2019). How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion and tenure documents? ELife, 8, e42254. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42254 Download Download
Fleerackers, A., & Albrecht, C. (2019). You-niversity? Perceptions on the public effectiveness of university knowledge production. 13. Download
Siler, K., Haustein, S., Smith, E., Larivière, V., & Alperin, J. P. (2018). Authorial and institutional stratification in open access publishing: the case of global health research. PeerJ, 6, e4269. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4269 Download
Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375 Download
Shu, F., Mongeon, P., Haustein, S., Siler, K., Alperin, J. P., & Larivière, V. (2018). Is it such a big deal? On the cost of journal use in the digital era. College & Research Libraries, 79(6), 785–798. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.6.785 Download
Alperin, J. P., & Rozemblum, C. (2017). La reinterpretación de visibilidad y calidad en las nuevas políticas de evaluación de revistas científicas. Revista Interamericana de Bibliotecología, 40(3), 231–241. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.rib.v40n3a04
Garnett, A., Aufreiter, M., Buchtala, O., & Alperin, J. P. (2017). Introducing Texture: An open source WYSIWYG Javascript editor for JATS. National Center for Biotechnology Information (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425544/
Neto, S. C., Willinsky, J., & Alperin, J. P. (2016). Measuring, rating, supporting, and strengthening open access scholarly publishing in Brazil. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(0), 54. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.2391 Download
Reilly, K. M. A., & Alperin, J. P. (2016). Intermediation in open development: A knowledge stewardship approach. Global Media Journal - Canadian Edition, Volume 9(1), 51–71. http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/1601/v9i1_reilly%20and%20alperin_e.html
Alperin, J. P., & Fischman, Gustavo E. (Eds.). (2015). Made in Latin America: Open access, scholarly journals, and regional innovations. http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20150921045253/MadeInLatinAmerica.pdf