Affordable and equitable open access in the sciences: grassroots solutions

Abstract

In October 2014 Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced that the journal Nature Communications would become a fully open access title. NPG, however, is not the first major publisher of scientific literature to adopt this approach to publishing. Recently, AAAS launched a new open access journal, Science Advances. Likewise, the American Chemical Society (ACS) announced a new, interdisciplinary, open access journal, ACS Central Science at the end of 2013. These efforts at NPG, AAAS and ACS are not risky, entrepreneurial ventures. In fact, they follow the successful launch of open access journals by Public Library of Science (PLOS) and by many large publishers of scientific journals, including: Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, SAGE, and Oxford. If the rise of open access publishing continues at the current, disruptive rate, more than 50% of the annually published articles would be published in open access journals before 2020. This change in how science is published comes with many benefits. In addition to increased readership and citation rates, open access speeds the dissemination of knowledge while reducing financial barriers for unaffiliated researchers and other curious minds. This change also introduces a new and sometimes unsettling information marketplace for authors and researchers--including, steep fees for article processing, worries about the rigor of review and fraudulent publishers. As open access publishing becomes more common, how can authors participate in the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls? What can new research labs and small universities do to support equitable access for the readers and for the authors of scholarship in the sciences?