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The Future of Scientific Publishing

Haustein, Stefanie

Publisher
Zenodo
DOI
10.5281/zenodo.17618782
Repository
zenodo.org
Language
en

Abstract

Presentation at the Royal Society of Canada Celebration of Excellence & Engagement 2025 panel "The Future of Scientific organized by Érudit Panel discussion with Chad Gaffield, Arash Abizadeh and Stefanie Haustein, 15 November 2025, Montréal Researchers find themselves trapped in a publishing system under strain: libraries can no longer afford rising subscription costs, journals have gone digital but retained outdated print-era conventions, and the pressure to publish in prestigious venues continues to shape careers and research priorities. Today, the system faces a deeper crisis of credibility: paper mills and AI tools fabricate fake articles, while editors struggle to find reviewers as submissions soar. As commercial publishers profit from open access policies through fees that are based on prestige not production costs, pressure on editors to publish more, faster, and on marketable topics continues to grow. However, the call for reform has never been louder, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S. considering caps on article processing charges (APCs) and the Royal Society in the U.K. adopting a collectively funded diamond open access model. With an updated Tri-Agency open access policy about to be released, the panel will discuss what role Canada, and foremost Royal Society members, can play in reclaiming scholarly publishing as a trustworthy, sustainable, and community-driven public good.

Full text

The Future of Scientific Publishing RSC COEE Panel organized by Érudit Stefanie Haustein uOttawa School of Information Studies (ÉSIS) & ScholCommLab @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca | ORCID: 0000-0003-0157-1430 Royal Society Canada Celebration of Excellence & Engagement 2025, Montréal Future of Scientific Publishing 2 Beigel, F., Brockington, D., Crosetto, P., Derrick, G., Fyfe, A., Barreiro, P. G., Hanson, M. A., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Noe, C., Pinfield, S., & Wilsdon, J. (2025). The Drain of Scientific Publishing [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.04820 Haustein, S. (2025). The Drain of Scientific Publishing Infographic. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17594290 Future of Scientific Publishing 3 Revenue data derived from DeltaThink Open Access Market Sizing Updates 2020-2025 The Drain: Money Academic journal publishing Future of Scientific Publishing 4 Beigel, F., Brockington, D., Crosetto, P., Derrick, G., Fyfe, A., Barreiro, P. G., Hanson, M. A., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Noe, C., Pinfield, S., & Wilsdon, J. (2025). The Drain of Scientific Publishing [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.04820 The Drain: Money Revenue, profits and profit margins 2024 Future of Scientific Publishing 5 Beigel, F., Brockington, D., Crosetto, P., Derrick, G., Fyfe, A., Barreiro, P. G., Hanson, M. A., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Noe, C., Pinfield, S., & Wilsdon, J. (2025). The Drain of Scientific Publishing [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.04820 The Drain: Money Revenue, profits and profit margins 2024 Future of Scientific Publishing 6 The Drain: Money Estimated APC revenue and average gold and hybrid APCs Haustein, S., Schares, E., Alperin, J.P., Hare, M., Butler, L.-A., & Schönfelder, N. (2024). Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 [preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.16551 Brainard, J. (2024). Open for Business. Authors are increasingly paying to publish their papers open access. But is it fair or sustainable? [News feature], Science, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads1013 Future of Scientific Publishing 7 Beigel, F., Brockington, D., Crosetto, P., Derrick, G., Fyfe, A., Barreiro, P. G., Hanson, M. A., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Noe, C., Pinfield, S., & Wilsdon, J. (2025). The Drain of Scientific Publishing [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.04820 The Drain: Time Average output per researcher and turnaround times per publisher Future of Scientific Publishing 8 The Drain: Trust Future of Scientific Publishing 9 https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/relx-2022-annual-report.pdf The Drain: Control Elsevier’s “research intelligence” pipeline →Products →Scopus →SciVal →Pure →Digital Commons →analytical services →Acquisitions →Mendeley (2013) →Newsflo (2015) →SSRN (2016) →Hivebench (2016) →Plum Analytics (2017) →bepress (2017) →Aries Systems (2018) →Science-Metrix (2018) →SciBite (2020) →Osmosis (2021) →Interfolio (2022)