Market Sizing Update 2024: Has OA hit a peak?

"We estimate that the OA market grew to just over $2.2bn in 2023.

• 2023’s OA market grew by just under 1.7% from 2022. This less than one tenth of its historic growth.
• We estimate the total scholarly journals market to have increased by 1.2% in 2023, compared with its long-term low single-digit growth around 5%.
• Around 50% of all scholarly articles were published as paid-for open access in 2023, accounting for just over 20% of corresponding market value.
• The large fully open access publishers saw a significant drop in their output in 2023. We are likely also seeing the tail-end of the correction from the very high OA growth during COVID. This has led to a collapse in growth of fully OA output and revenue.
• Hybrid OA has taken up some of the shrinkage in fully OA. Growth in hybrid output and hybrid revenues continues to be strong.
• Without currency effects, growth would be even slower than the headline numbers suggest. Total OA value would have shrunk by 0.2%, and the overall journals market would have grown at 0.3%. This suggests that underlying growth in the OA market has stalled and that of the overall market grew at around one tenth of long-term trends.
• Growth in OA has shrunk to that of the underlying scholarly journals market.
• We anticipate a 2023-2026 CAGR (average growth each year) of 4.9% in OA output and 6.3% in OA market value. This is significantly lower than historical averages...."