Free but Hesitant: Understanding the Complexity of Open Access Journal Publishing in China

The development of open access (OA) journals in mainland China, like other non-English-speaking countries, have been studied extensively in recent years. Existing studies may have failed to strictly differentiate between OA journals and free access journals, resulting in a much larger number of OA journals surveyed than the number of China’s OA journals included in DOAJ. This study investigates and analyzes the current status of OA publishing of academic journals indexed by CSCD and CSSCI in mainland China. The results revealed that academic journals in mainland China have a high degree of complexity in OA publishing, with a small number of strict OA journals that make a clear OA statement coexisting with a large number of free-access journals that “doing without saying”, indicating that most journals remain hesitant to fully embrace OA publishing.