The uptake of open access in hybrid journal publishing

Abstract:  Hybrid open access has been the subject of considerable debate in scholarly communication for more than two decades. Under this model, academic journals make some articles openly available, typically for a fee, while others remain behind a paywall. Initially regarded as a means of transitioning from subscription-based journal publishing to full open access, limited evidence exists about whether this approach is achieving its intended purpose. The role of transformative agreements, a library licensing model addressing hybrid journal portfolios from established commercial publishers, is particularly disputed. Yet, bibliometric evidence on their uptake and underlying funding streams is largely unavailable. This doctoral thesis addresses these gaps by investigating open access uptake in hybrid journals following the introduction of transformative agreements through an open methodology based on open metadata.

This cumulative thesis comprises four studies. The first study examines 152 reverseflip journals that shifted from full open access to subscription models, including hybrid open access. The second study provides an article-level analysis of Elsevier’s hybrid journal portfolio consisting of roughly 2,000 hybrid journals between 2015 and 2019. The focus was on examining the role of initial open access agreements and policies on the activities of this major commercial publisher using publicly available metadata. Building on these case studies, the third and fourth studies present complementary large-scale analyses of over 13,000 hybrid journals and around ten million articles. Using Crossref, OpenAlex, and transformative agreement data from the international funder initiative cOAlition S, an open methodology was developed for this purpose. The third study investigates the period 2018-2022, while the fourth covers 2019-2023 and validates the open methodology by comparing its results with the proprietary databases Scopus and Web of Science at both journal and article levels.