Open access is not enough. We need open equity

Research funders, academics and their institutions have spent the past decade moving towards an open future. That future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet. 

Open-access publishing promises – and delivers – free and equal access to peer-reviewed research papers for anyone anywhere in the world. Paywalls fall, while readership, citations and impact rise. 

The White House’s decision to compel all papers from publicly funded research in the US to become immediately open access by 2025 is laudable. It’s reasonable that the billions of dollars spent annually by the US government on research should result in publications that are freely available for both American citizens and the global public at large. The move follows similar decrees by other governments and funders around the world. 

At Cambridge University Press, just over half of our research journal papers published in 2022 were open access. The vast majority will be by 2025. We are “flipping” entire journals and launching more fully open journals every year.

A major pathway to achieving the open access transition has been our implementation of a proactive transformative agreement strategy that is inclusive of all institution types, not just the research-intensives. For example, in the US we have more than 400 institutions now in a Cambridge open publishing agreement, covering a tremendous diversity of size, research intensity and disciplinary focus, including liberal arts colleges, community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This is one way we’re working with our institutional partners to make open access work for everyone.

But as open-access publishing shifts costs from readers to authors, we risk creating new inequalities. Well-funded scholars in economically developed nations and their institutions can typically cover publishing costs, whether directly through article processing charges or via institutional open-access publishing agreements. This is not true of their peers in many other parts of the world, who therefore risk being prevented from publishing in international open-access journals.

Publishers and research funders, whether governmental, non-profit, philanthropic or private, should worry about this. The problem is not simply about diversity among authors – critical as that is to the intellectual lifeblood of academe. We risk missing out on vital contributions to everything from mental health to clean energy from academics in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers in such countries played critical roles in understanding development economics and democratisation, the emergence of stem cell technology and sequencing the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

Open access alone is insufficient, then. We need to aim for open equity.

As a department of the University of Cambridge and a not-for-profit publisher, we reinvest our surplus back into our products and services, into our university and in pursuit of our academic mission. But the quest for open equity needs to involve all stakeholders if it is to be successful. That is why we’re combining CUP’s own funds with contributions from like-minded institutional customers and research funders to launch the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative, aimed at ensuring that authors from 107 low- and middle-income countries can publish open access in our journals without having to pay.

It’s a risk. If we don’t gain sufficient external support, the model won’t be sustainable. But we have to try – and the global scholarly community will benefit as we do so. Moreover, early support from some of our biggest institutional customers is giving us grounds for optimism. As Iowa State University librarian Curtis Brundy puts it, “It is essential that we centre equity in the transition to open access…Access to funding should not determine ability to publish.”

We believe that transparency is key. Having a segmented fund to cover the costs associated with publishing articles enables customers and funders to make a considered choice about whether this is something they want to support. We recognise that all publishers are facing the same challenges and may choose to address it in different ways, but we are open to collaborating with other academic presses or funding bodies if there are ways to extend the fund to support their authors too.

We also recognise that there are independent scholars at small or underfunded institutions even in economically developed nations that might struggle in the new open context. These authors will be able to apply to a parallel discretionary waiver fund for article processing charges.

Our Equity Initiative alone won’t fix wider inequities: academics in low-income countries face plenty of other obstacles beyond article processing charges. But as we look to an open future, issues of equity should become a top priority. The global research community can and must build an open equity movement.

Mandy Hill is managing director of academic publishing at Cambridge University Press.