The Call for Open Access and How Publishers Are Responding – an Analysis of Annual Reports

The Call for Open Access and How Publishers Are Responding – an Analysis of Annual Reports Maria Henkel*, Kristin Biesenbender** and Isabella Peters*** *[email protected] ORCID 0000-0002-5000-104X ZBW–Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Kiel ** K.Biesenben[email protected] ORCID 0000-0003-2497-5411 ZBW–Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Hamburg *** [email protected] ORCID 0000-0001-5840-0806 ZBW–Leibniz Information Centre for Economics & Kiel University, Kiel, Germany Abstract: The open access (OA) movement has reshaped scholarly publishing, prompting divergent reactions from academic communities and publishers. While researchers face pressure to publish, publishers have developed new business models to maintain profitability, including article processing charges (APCs) and transformative agreements. These economic strategies may conflict with academic values, sometimes resulting in questionable publication practices, such as inflation of special issues. This poster presents a qualitative analysis of the strategic interests of publishers. For that, annual reports of large publishers (in terms of the number of their OA publications) were analysed with respect to OA and profit strategies; special case studies on country level were also included. Challenges in using corporate reporting as research data and preliminary findings on publisher business models will also be discussed. Introduction Large commercial publishing houses were expeditious in their adaptation to the digital era – it was the “big five” (also known as the oligopoly) in particular which employed strategies such as mergers and acquisitions resulting in a consolidation of the publishing landscape and the power to dictate market conditions (Larivière et al., 2015). This shift has had detrimental consequences for the supply chain of scientific information, which is now heavily reliant on services provided by large for-profit publishing houses (Weingart & Taubert, 2017). Additionally, the shift towards OA has posed a significant challenge to the traditional business model of academic publishers, which primarily relied on subscription fees through paywalls. In response, publishers have implemented article processing charges (APCs), requiring authors to cover the expenses associated with publishing OA articles. These charges, which can amount to several thousand euros per publication, have emerged as a significant revenue stream for academic publishers (Butler et al., 2023; Pinfield & Middleton, 2016; Schönfelder, 2020; Zhang et al., 2022). Publishers employ tactics such as price discrimination to increase subscriptions and APCs for high-impact journals, which many libraries and authors are willing to pay for due to the prestige and influence these journals have on the academic reward system (Eykens et al., 2019; Khoo, 2019; Shu et al., 2018; Siler & Frenken, 2020). In addition, for several years publishers have been using their market power to negotiate so-called transformative agreements (e.g., DEAL) with scholarly organisations in order to receive payment for publish and read contracts for their portfolio of journals (Fraser et al., 2023). Other publishers, such as PLOS, MDPI and Frontiers, entered the market as primarily OA publishers and developed APC pricing models with discounts for researchers who collaborated with them as reviewers and editors (Oviedo-Garcia, 2021; Wissenschaftsrat, 2022). This transformation of publishing business models is a source of conflict in terms of the interplay between economic and academic orientations (Volkmann et al., 2014) of stakeholders of scholarly communication. Objective Against this background, we investigate how publishers have responded to the call for OA, focusing particularly on conflicts between academic and economic motivations and strategies. Our research question is as follows: How do publishers translate OA policies into business models? To this end, we examine how the business models of the ten largest OA publishing houses respond to the call for OA. Methods and Data We plan to use content analysis and qualitative coding to analyse how publisher’s management and involved journal editors translate OA policy demands into economic business models. The analysis will include large OA publishing houses (in terms of numbers of OA publications), such as Elsevier, SpringerNature, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford University Press, MDPI and PLOS. The following five national publishers should be analysed to broaden the perspective: AOSIS (South Africa), Copernicus Publications (Germany), Érudit (Canada), National University of Colombia (Colombia) and Udayana University Press (Indonesia). Annual reports of publishers and OA statements will be analysed, to assess how their OA strategy is framed. This will provide initial results about strategies that will be further investigated in interviews in a later phase of the research project. The categories that guide our investigation are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Analytical Categories for Publisher Report Analysis General Information Publisher Name Year of Report Report Type Scientific output in figures: Number of journals/articles and books Publishers' origin and self-portrayal Business Model & Open Access Strategy Publishers' business models (based on APCs, DEAL, subscriptions, scholar-led funding in the case of Diamond OA) and the extent of the mix Change of publishers' business models over time and sales development (market shares and shifts in revenue model from subscriptions to OA; shareholder value) Revenue Sources (breakdown of income) APC pricing & transparency (disclosure of APC costs, justification for pricing, pricing tiers) Transformative agreements (mentions of deals with institutions/libraries transitioning from subscriptions to OA) Expansion of OA portfolio (new journal launches, acquisitions, mergers related to OA) Journals Provider for which disciplines; Journals subject areas Indexing and Abstracting e.g. DOAJ; Impact Factors; Citations, Downloads Editorial & Peer Review Policies Type of collaboration with researchers as reviewers and authors (authors by regions) Peer Review Process: Description of review timelines, single/double-blind or open review Review Speed & Quality Control: Any mention of fast-track peer review, concerns about review rigour Special Issues & Thematic Journals: Expansion of special issues, volume increase Editorial Board Practices: Composition, selection process, diversity of board members Manuscript Transfer Practices: Policies on redirecting rejected papers to other OA journals Ethical Standards & Research Integrity Commitment to Research Integrity: Statements on quality control, ethical publishing Retractions & Corrections: Mentions of retractions, errata, or publisher-led investigations Handling of Misconduct: Publisher policies on addressing predatory behaviour paper mills, citation stacking AI & Automated Review Policies: Guidelines on AI-generated content, automated plagiarism checks Policy & Regulatory Response OA statements from publishers (also: statements regarding OA mandates, policy shifts, resistance or support) Compliance with OA Policies: Adherence to Plan S, DORA, Coalition S, national mandates Engagement with Researchers & Institutions: Evidence of dialogue with academic communities Other Other services: Repository ownership, publication and citation databases, social networks, etc. Technological Innovations: Use of AI, blockchain, data analytics in scholarly publishing Preliminary findings and prospects Our ongoing examination of reports and additional material, such as OA statements, has already brought to light the two major ways in which publishers present their business models and address the stakeholders: first, they speak to their shareholders as financial supporters and second, they address researchers as users and collaborators. This becomes evident in the wide range of metrics they report, including the number of OA publications, citations, reach in indices, and their collaboration with the scientific community, such as the number of collaborating editors and authors. Additionally, they provide a comprehensive overview of their economic business model in relation to their financial performance. At the same time, the publishers emphasise different aspects in their self-portrayal. The poster will describe the significant differences between the OA publishers and selected country cases, along the lines of the coding scheme. Open science practices Our study uses publicly available annual reports and policy documents from publishing houses. The coding framework and analysis protocol will be shared via an open repository upon completion of the project. Author contributions Conceptualization: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender, Isabella Peters. Data curation: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender. Formal analysis: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender. Funding acquisition: Isabella Peters. Investigation: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender. Methodology: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender, Isabella Peters. Project administration: Isabella Peters. Resources: Isabella Peters. Software: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender. Supervision: Isabella Peters. Validation: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender. Visualization: Maria Henkel. Writing – original draft: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender. Writing – review & editing: Maria Henkel, Kristin Biesenbender, Isabella Peters. Competing interests We declare that we have no competing interests. Funding information Funded by VolkswagenStiftung / Volkswagen Foundation, Project “Repercussions of Open Access on Research Assessment (ROARA)”, Funding Number: 9C784. References Oviedo-Garcia, M. A. (2021). Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). 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