Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review

Severin, Anna; Egger, Matthias; Eve, Martin Paul; Hürlimann, Daniel (2020). Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review F1000Research, 7, pp. 1-42. 10.12688/f1000research.17328.2

Preview

Text Discipline-specific open access 2020.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (1MB) | Preview

Background: Many of the discussions surrounding Open Access (OA) revolve around how it affects publishing practices across different academic disciplines. It was a long-held view that it would be only a matter of time before all disciplines fully and relatively homogeneously implemented OA. Recent large-scale bibliometric studies show, however, that the uptake of OA differs substantially across disciplines. We aimed to answer two questions: First, how do different disciplines adopt and shape OA publishing practices? Second, what discipline-specific barriers to and potentials for OA can be identified? Methods: In a first step, we identified and synthesized relevant bibliometric studies that assessed OA prevalence and publishing patterns across disciplines. In a second step, and adopting a social shaping of technology perspective, we studied evidence on the socio- technical forces that shape OA publishing practices. We examined a variety of data sources, including, but not limited to, publisher policies and guidelines, OA mandates and policies and author surveys. Results: Over the last three decades, scholarly publishing has experienced a shift from “closed” access to OA as the proportion of scholarly literature that is openly accessible has increased continuously. Estimated OA levels for publication years after 2010 varied between 29.4% and 66%. The shift towards OA is uneven across disciplines in two respects: first, the growth of OA has been uneven across disciplines, which manifests itself in varying OA prevalence levels. Second, disciplines use different OA publishing channels to make research outputs OA. Conclusions: We conclude that historically rooted publishing practices differ in terms of their compatibility with OA, which is the reason why OA can be assumed to be a natural continuation of publishing cultures

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	Business School
Name:	Severin, Anna; Egger, Matthias; Eve, Martin Paul and Hürlimann, Daniel0000-0002-5483-2449
ISSN:	2046-1402
Language:	English
Submitter:	Daniel Hürlimann
Date Deposited:	04 May 2022 13:58
Last Modified:	04 May 2022 13:58
Publisher DOI:	10.12688/f1000research.17328.2
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Open Access Open Science Publishing Scholarly Communication Science Policy, Communication Technologies Scientometrics Meta-Synthesis
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.16896
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/16896