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The oligopoly of open access publishing

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Abstract

Open access (OA) publishing is often viewed as a promising solution for the future of scholarly publishing, as it has the potential to reduce global inequalities in access to scientific literature by removing paywalls. However, the adoption of OA publishing may not necessarily lead to a decrease in the overall cost of knowledge dissemination, as Article Processing Charges (APCs) can create an additional financial burden for scholars, particularly those from developing countries. Despite being intended as a way to disrupt the scholarly publishing oligopoly, OA publishing has faced challenges in achieving this goal. These challenges were revealed through a comprehensive analysis of OA publishing from 2008 to 2020, as detailed in this study.

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Notes

  1. The formula of HHI is.

    $$HHI={\sum }_{i=1}^{n}{Si}^{2}$$

    where Si is the market share of a given publisher i, and n is the number of publishers in the market.

  2. Ranked by both the number of OA publications and the number of OA publications indexed by Dimension and WoS respectively. These eight publishers are listed as the top 10 publishers in all four rankings.

  3. Hindawi is an independent publisher during the period of investigation (2008–2020) in this study although it was acquired by Wiley-Blackwell in January 2021.

  4. Web of Science Research Areas (SU) are used here. They consist of 5 major domains (Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Physical Sciences, and Technology), which are assigned at the journal level.

  5. Only the countries with at least 100 publications in 2020 were ranked.

  6. The library material expenditure consists of journal subscription, book and monograph purchase, electronic resource subscription and other expenditures; journal subscription accounts for the largest portion in the library material budget.

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Acknowledgements

The present study is supported by National Science Foundations of China (Grant # 72274048).

Funding

This work was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, 72274048, Fei Shu.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China

    Fei Shu

  2. École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Fei Shu & Vincent Larivière

  3. Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie, Université du Québec À Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Vincent Larivière

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  1. Fei Shu
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  2. Vincent Larivière
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Correspondence to Fei Shu.

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Shu, F., Larivière, V. The oligopoly of open access publishing. Scientometrics 129, 519–536 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04876-2

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