To Complete the Open Access Transition, First Ask the Right Questions | Katina Magazine

"If we step away from counting outputs and listen—listen through one-on-one conversations, listen through workshops and interviews that create space for stakeholders to talk about the issue of exclusion in publishing, and listen by commissioning and assimilating research that is not driven solely by quantitative metrics—different pictures emerge. They reveal consolidation in the ways we are achieving open access (predominantly via publication-level and/or author-facing fees) and the absence of perspectives of who and what from the output-driven data we often spend time on. After over four years of “listening work” at OASPA, we recognize that today’s mature open access movement is only serving a subset of the world’s scholars (more on these themes under Further Reading at the end of this article, and also under Asare-Nuamah, 2023 and Druelinger & Ma, 2023).

Per-publication charge and author-fee models can do a lot to further open knowledge, and it is excellent that about half of published research is available open access. But these predominant routes to open access, largely based on practices standard in (or influenced by) regions of the Global North, have the unintended consequence of disadvantaging or excluding many scholars, and can hinder open publishing across the globe, despite waiver programs (Druelinger & Ma, 2023)...."