A Global Vision for Open Access: Insights and Perspectives from the Scientific Community in India

What are the benefits of open access publishing for researchers in the scientific community?

Open access makes your science immediately accessible to a wide readership. At present a lot of published content is available only through subscription mode, that is it can be accessed only by those readers/authors who either have individual or institutional subscription. As a result, one’s research reaches only to those who can afford to pay for subscription and not to the author/reader community which actually is interested but can’t afford to pay for the same. The more accessible the results of your research to the community, the better is the visibility of your research immediately after publication. Since much of the research costs are borne by the governments, in most countries through public funding, it is justifiable that the readers must have free access to knowledge generated by public funding.

However, the research publication/journal enterprise is becoming increasingly costlier due to so many value additions – noticeably short time for appearing in print after acceptance, high quality journal production, dissemination of work in a very short time through alerts etc. If the reader does not pay for the costs, someone has to pay and so, it is the authors who have to bear some of the costs. Thus, the publishing enterprise is moving away from reader subscription model to author pay cost model. This is what is required by Plan S, which needs to be adapted by most publishers in a couple of years. It is not only the final research publication, but also the data generated for that process must also be freely accessible. The open access approach will fundamentally change the economics of research publications and knowledge accessibility in an unprecedented way. When most publications become open access, it is believed that the saved subscription costs of the journals may offset the APC for authors from that Institutions.

What is the challenge in ensuring open access becomes more equitable and accessible for researchers across the globe?

The research community involves, authors, readers, reviewers and of course the publishers. Open access to research data and results must be equitable, as it is financed mostly through public taxpayers' money and all stakeholders should stand gain. To achieve this, the main impetus is to fund the researchers by the grant agencies separately for publication costs. This has not been the case so far except for some funding agencies in Europe. The article publication charges vary widely across different journal portfolios, ranging from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars. The dilemma for authors is to decide in which journal to publish based on its scientific relevance to the community rather than the affordability. The non-availability of publication costs as part of their research grant and the varying currency parity across the globe imposes the greatest barrier on equitable access for researchers across the globe.

From your perspective, how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

The strict compliance to Plan S and its variants when made compulsory will have a great deal of impact for Indian researchers. Although making research freely accessible has been directed by the Indian grant agencies there has been no discussion or debate yet in the highest circles on either the mode or the extent of additional support for APC built into research grants. Currently only those individuals or Institutes who can afford have been paying APC. Journals have also come up with different models of subscription to support the authors to pay APC. One model is “Read and Publish” where the Institutional subscription to journals of a publishers allows the authors from that Institution to publish without APC. Many times, membership to some societies also entitles to waiver of partial costs towards publication. In India there have been discussions around the “One Nation, One Subscription”, modal but it has not led to any success yet with the publishers. Certainly, not just India, but many other developing countries will greatly benefit from “Open Access” as it provides unhindered access to knowledge and data for majority of researchers, which will certainly promote equitable generation of new knowledge from across the world.

What are the benefits of open access publishing for researchers in the scientific community?

Open access publications allow anyone interested in the field to read the paper or cite it freely without any hindrance. Thus, authors can reach a wider audience with minimal payment. This is the essence of Author Paying Mode. Obviously, this is not a good business model as far as trend setting or path breaking papers are concerned. Here the Journal loses out on revenue. On the other hand, in Reader Paying Mode, the reader needs to pay for reading each article thus journals earn for high value paper. The major benefit in author paying mode, thus will be that authors can disseminate information rapidly to a wider audience.

What is the challenge in ensuring open access becomes more equitable and accessible for researchers across the globe?

In my opinion, the biggest challenge for open-access publication is the predatory journals which usually fly by night operations and promise the authors rapid publication (at times with or without a nominal review) upon payments. However, such operations are bound to fail in short time, because authors will very soon realize that such papers are of no value to them in the long run. Large publishing houses have earned respectability based on a well streamlined quality check process, which ensures a good model for open access publication.

From your perspective, how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

The concept of Open Access Publication has already made an impact among Indian scientists. It will increase further when authors realize that this is the best way to reach a larger body of peers. If the institutes/universities can shoulder the page charges, it will be even better.

What are the benefits of open access publishing for researchers in the scientific community?

Open access (OA) publishing offers various advantages to researchers in the scientific community. The open availability of research papers expedites scientific discoveries and helps researchers across the globe to access essential literature. It amplifies the visibility and influence of a researcher’s work by making it universally accessible, which can lead to higher citations of the research work and wider research dissemination.OA publications also play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between researchers and the general public which helps in promoting the scientific research to general audience. Earlier only developed countries students and researchers have the access to essential literatures. However, open access platforms provide this opportunity to researchers across globe, which contributes to global knowledge exchange.

What is the challenge in ensuring open access becomes more equitable and accessible for researchers across the globe?

Ensuring fair and convenient open access (OA) for researchers worldwide is an admirable objective, but it presents a number of difficulties:

The publishing costs and article processing charges (APCs) that are connected with many open access journals may be out of reach for many researchers, especially those in low- and middle-income countries. This creates a barrier to publishing in OA outlets. Researchers may have concerns about copyright issues and licensing when publishing in OA journals. Ensuring that they retain sufficient rights over their work is crucial to promote equitable access. Research data is also included in the concept of open access, in addition to publications. It can be difficult to guarantee fair access to research data, particularly in disciplines with stringent data-sharing regulations.

Collaboration between governments, organizations, funders, scholars, and the academic publishing community is necessary to address these issues. Institutions should supply the infrastructure and resources necessary to promote open access (OA), and policymakers should foster positive conditions for it.

From your perspective, how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

Open access is expected to have a significant impact on Indian science. It increases the visibility of Indian research by making it freely available to the worldwide audience. This also helps in breaking the financial barriers and ensuring that research is accessible to all. This will benefit the students, researchers, and institutions with limited resources. Open access will also boost global and domestic collaboration, fostering cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research relationships. Additionally, open access resources can greatly benefit the education in India, offering free access to up-to-date research materials. Open access is likely to contribute to India's scientific growth by increasing visibility, accessibility, and global impact.

How has the librarian’s role changed in the evolving open access publishing world?

The open access movement emerged in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional publishing models. It is on the rise due to many factors, the biggest being the growth of the internet and ease of access. At the heart of open access is the ethos to facilitate the sharing of knowledge for the benefit of the wider public good, a mission that closely aligns with the ideals of librarians and the institutions they serve. Libraries find themselves increasingly providing advice and financial support to researchers wishing to publish open access. They are sharing and highlighting open access resources on their websites and catalogues, boosting the transition of open access through publisher partnerships, and supporting crowdfunding approaches toward open access funding for publications (especially books). As a result, librarians are becoming more involved in scholarly publishing initiatives and advancing the adoption and creation of open and affordable course content. As far as India is concerned, here academic visibility, impact of research output, public perception, etc. are major drivers for ranking and accreditation, apart from individual promotion in academics and research. Here, the Librarians are playing a great role in achieving the same. If the entity like One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) is able to strike a deal with the publishers for APC or Open Access support for their researchers, that could be great, and open access really become more open.

What are the current challenges facing open access?

The open access movement has gained momentum in recent years. However, it faces several challenges as well. One of the biggest challenges is the sustainability of the OA model. While OA publishing offers free access to readers, it does not eliminate the costs associated with the publication process. To sustain the high quality of journals and uphold rigorous editorial standards, most gold OA journals rely on APCs. These charges are posing a barrier for most authors, particularly those without access to research funding. Another challenge is regulatory compliance. For many academics, open access is associated with bureaucracy and reduced agency. Confusion is worsened by the conflation between fully open access journals and hybrid journals – proprietary journals which include an option for open access for individual articles. Finally, inequality in access to research funding across disciplines, countries, and institutions results in most authors struggling to cover APCs. To address this issue, publishers are negotiating transformative agreements with institutions and national consortia to centralize the payment of OA publishing fees and remove the financial burden from individual authors.

From your perspective, how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

India’s science policy, Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2020, aims to make scholarly knowledge openly accessible to all. The ONOS also has the mandate to make the contents accessible to all, with government funding. They also have provision to pay the APCs. This new proposal is expected to replace the current norm where individual academic institutes or consortia of institutes subscribe to journals separately, thereby replicating costs. If this policy comes into force, anyone in India will be able to access scholarly literature without having to pay for it. The experts have proposed further to remove the burden of APCs on the researchers, either via a system of invoicing to the government or through a ‘subscription rights’ mechanism via a centralized portal. The policy will recommend a central payment system for APCs for all reputed APC-based journals. Predatory publishers will be strictly excluded from this system. This new open access policy of India will not just open up scholarly knowledge but also access to research data and research infrastructure. It is expected that this policy will have far-reaching implications in the knowledge creation and dissemination cycle. Also, factors like academic visibility, impact of research output, public perception, etc. are major drivers for ranking and accreditation, apart from individual promotion in academics and research. This is helping India make OA more common, as more visibility means, more citations, more H index, more citations per faculty, etc., a win-win situation for all. So, the overall scenario in India is encouraging and open.

How has the librarian’s role changed in the evolving open access publishing world?

The role of a librarian in supporting research for institutional excellence is crucial and multifaceted. Librarians play a vital role in providing resources, assistance, and guidance to researchers, faculty, and students. Since 2002, when the term "open access" was coined, academic publishing has drastically changed and so has the role of the Librarians. Librarians need to be proactive and need to provide information at all fronts including library websites, social media, academic communities etc. Librarians need to keep track of Institutional publications including open-access publishing. They also need to create awareness about open-access publishing in campus by various user education programs such as author workshops/editorial workshops/ etc.

Librarians are instrumental in supporting research for institutional excellence, facilitate access to information, assist with research data management, foster collaboration, contribute to scholarly communication.

What are the current challenges facing open access?

A major issue faced by the academic community/faculty members/scholars is APC. Faculty members wish to publish their manuscripts on the open access platform but struggle to pay APC charges as they do not have any specific funding and most of the academic institutions also do not support their APC charges.

From your perspective how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

Open access has already a huge impact on Indian Science. Academic publishers are slowly converting their publications into open-access mode and most of these OA e-journals are asking for APC.

The advantage of the open access movement is that the academic community gets access to many of the reputed e-journals, but the authors need to pay publication charges.

One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) is also on the wish list of Govt of India and things are on the card. APC is also one of the agenda of this project. Things will change after the implementation of ONOS.

What are the benefits of open access publishing for researchers in the scientific community?

Open access allows one to reach people who typically don't have access to scientific publications. For example, UG institutes, non-technical institutes, institutes in countries which can't afford paid journals and most importantly industrial work force who may not subscribe to scientific journals.

What is the challenge in ensuring open access becomes more equitable and accessible for researchers across the globe?

This is not a challenge, perhaps a better business model is required. One business model could be based on PPP calculations, other could be "more volume, less margins" or vice-versa.

From your perspective, how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

India has not really accepted open access as of now. Sufficient meetings and marketing is required where institute level arrangements have to be made for incentivizing OA publications in high impact journals.

What are the benefits of open access publishing for researchers in the scientific community?

"In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.” Researchers are always trying their best to follow this quote from Sir William Osler and are communicating their research finding with the scientific community via high quality publications. A good scientific journal act as a bridge between researchers to communicate efficiently. Unfortunately, owing to the financial constraints, all the researchers worldwide are not in a position to access good quality journals, hampering quality research output. An open access publishing will be a breakthrough in this direction. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted an urge of open access of scientific communication without any paywall. With the open access publications, researcher can reach to a greater number of readers which will not only help to boost the creativity of the researchers but also the citations. The wide spread of hard-earned knowledge among versatile intellectuals can expand thought processes in various dimensions and hence applications which may result in interdisciplinary conversations and may provide more opportunities for collaborations. The open access publishing will eliminate the financial discrimination and everyone can be updated about what is going on in research all around the world. The new generation, who is very familiar with the use of internet will be benefited the most with the cutting-edge knowledge on their fingertips. While improving the visibility and impact of research, open access publishing will keep the copyright access of the work with the researchers and may provide fast dissemination of articles to scientific community improving the engagement of researchers as well as general public inculcating innovative ideas and collaborative possibilities among them.

What is the challenge in ensuring open access becomes more equitable and accessible for researchers across the globe?

The payment of article processing charges (APC) adds financial burden to the low-income institutes, restricting the researchers to publish their findings in good journals. This may lead to the trapping of researchers by predatory journals with the main aim of profit rather than academic integrity. Unfortunately, such situations also question the credibility of open access publishing. Selection of an appropriate trust worthy open access journal which can provide good platform and readership for our research is an important task. Ensuring the quality of peer review standards is a challenge for a predatory open access journals resulting in publication of lower-quality research. The financial sustainability of open access publishing journals relying solely on article processing charges may be a concern in the long term. Development of effective funding models to support open access publishing is the need of hour. Reaching to the researchers working in remote areas without appropriate internet access and other infrastructural problems, improvement of knowhow of the researchers about public copyright licenses and IPR and providing open access to the already published research are the other challenges which again can be improved by effective funding models and awareness campaigns.

From your perspective, how is open access going to impact Indian science in the near future?

Based on the recent research insights, India has produced about 1.3 million research papers between 2017 and 2022. The open access publishing by Indian researchers in the coming decade can help Indian researchers gain global visibility for their work and allow them to share their findings with a broader audience. Such practice will improve the collaborative opportunities of Indian researchers with scientists from around the world. The Indian government has already initiated several activities to improve international collaborations via GiAN and SPARC schemes of MHRD. The open access publishing will additionally help achieve the goals of such initiatives. Based on the improved visibility, Indian researchers can grab international funding which increasingly require that research they support is published in open access journals making diverse scientific literature more accessible.

Why do you choose to publish open access with ACS Publications?

Open access (OA) allows unrestricted global access without requiring a subscription. We opted to publish OA to make it freely available for anyone who wishes to read it, thus catching up with broader audiences. With OA articles accessible worldwide, we anticipate an increase in readership, which, in turn, can result in more citations. We also appreciate the quick process of OA publication. Further, OA can address the issue of having a lack of access to subscription-based journals by offering researchers from low-income countries to engage with the global research community. Moreover, some OA journals provide discounted or waived publication fees for papers from low-income countries.

What are the key challenges that you see in the open access publishing journey?

For OA journals, authors are typically responsible for covering the article publication charge (APC), often relying on research grants for funding. Consequently, authors who lack access to adequate funding sources or affiliations with underfunded institutions encounter challenges in getting their research published in OA journals. Another hurdle is finding appropriate journals. In some instances, authors may feel compelled or pressured to publish their work in journals perceived as prestigious to advance their careers. The other challenge, I think, lies in enhancing the quality of research for some OA journals. Researchers sometimes doubt the authenticity of the journal or publisher.

What are some of your favorite article/articles that you’ve published open access with ACS Publications?

Liposome-Based Antibacterial Delivery: An Emergent Approach to Combat Bacterial Infections
Rita Ghosh and Mrinmoy De
ACS Omega 2023, 8, 39, 35442–35451
DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.3c04893

Why do you choose to publish open access with ACS Publications?

The emergence of the pandemic situation led to a setback in the access of research articles from home as a majority of us were not physically present in the institute. Furthermore, a large number of Indian universities and lesser-known institutes lack the resources to purchase publisher subscriptions. Therefore, Open access (OA) is a necessity in a developing nation like ours. When I was given the chance to publish open access (OA) with ACS, I was overjoyed and felt extremely fortunate that everyone could view my work for free and that I could share my research article with anyone, even with those who are not directly involved in the academic/research community.

What are the key challenges that you see in the open access publishing journey?

Scientific publishing can occasionally become more commercialised when research is published after paying article processing fees. There may be fake publishing companies. The most significant challenge ahead is striking the correct balance between scientific value and commercialization. The research project's acceptance in journals ought to ideally be determined by its scientific value. The solution could be found in an effective collaboration between publishers and government sponsors. Reputable publishers such as ACS and RSC may take the lead. We hope for an open access environment that is both safe and easily accessible.

What are your favorite article/articles that you’ve published open access with ACS Publications?

I am glad to share one of my favorite papers below, published in ACS Materials Au. I hope readers will be intrigued reading this work, which arrived at a pivotal point in my PhD journey. This article contains elements of basic science and is fundamentally strong. In this work, we have explored the possibility of Joule heating through an electric field to understand the structural transformation in the hard carbon nanomaterial synthesised in our lab. This approach provides an advantage over the conventional method of transforming carbons which require high pressure and temperature conditions.

Joule Heating-Driven Transformation of Hard-Carbons to Onion-like Carbon Monoliths for Efficient Capture of Volatile Organic Compounds
Itisha Dwivedi and Chandramouli Subramaniam*
ACS Mater. Au 2022, 2, 2, 154–162
DOI: 10.1021/acsmaterialsau.1c00062