Report from Equity in Open Access workshop 1: the APC debate, reflections and rainbows - OASPA

"One consensus view that emerged from the conversations was that APCs (Article Processing / Publishing Charges) are a barrier to participation in OA publishing for authors in every region. This was in line with the global views OASPA has been gathering that were shared earlier this year. 

OASPA notes a raft of evidence and views supporting the problematic nature of the APC, from this 2020 commentary to this 2022 review and this 2022 study stating that open access is leading to closed research. 

OASPA also notes this 2019 blog post that asserts “unfairness lies at the core of the APC problem”, and talks about particular disadvantages to scholars based in the Global South. This 2020 study examining content published by US-based researchers between 2014 and 2018 in over 25,000 academic journals reveals that, in general, the likelihood for a scholar to author an APC-OA article “increases with male gender, employment at a prestigious institution, association with a STEM discipline, greater federal research funding, and more advanced career stage (i.e., higher professorial rank).” Meanwhile, we know that authors from the Global South are underrepresented in journals charging APCs from this study in December 2021. 

The APC model, and publisher deals that rely on APC-based computation, are therefore in danger of reinforcing a pattern of exclusive participation in open access. OA done this way leaves out the vast majority of the world’s researchers....

In other words, if APCs are inequitable, then so are fully-OA agreements (pure-publish) and transformative agreements (Read & Publish) when these are struck without principles of global inclusion and equity at their core...."