Challenges for sustainability of the open access model: Brazilian health journals

"According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)3, which only includes fully OA journals, only 26% of the 9,192 journals levy a publication fee. Of the 94 health journals in SciELO Brazil, only 17 journals (18%) use this source of income4. Although a small percentage of journals levy a publication fee, the amounts vary widely. In the case of SciELO Brazil, it oscillates between US$ 45 and US$ 910. These figures are well below those of megajournals such as PLoS One (US$ 1,495), PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine (both US$ 2,900).

Studies show that the resources employed by libraries to pay for journal subscriptions would be more than sufficient to finance the open access model through APCs. While this transition is not made, many funding agencies have allowed researchers to include the payment of APCs in their research projects, understanding that the publication of research outputs is the final step of these projects. Thus, it is unusual for researchers or graduate students to take personal responsibility for their payment."