In June 2025, three cross-sector, multi-stakeholder workshops took place as part of OASPA’s ‘Next 50%’ effort.
Simultaneously, we have been gathering inputs via an open survey; feedback from anyone remains possible until 11th July 2025.
Our deep thanks to all participants and survey respondents so far.
In this work we are attempting a different conversation about open access. What’s different and why? We are seeking more equity in transitioning the ‘Next 50%’ (of closed content) to open access, as well as in the ongoing delivery of fully open access publishing. The ‘Next 50%’ sessions brought together those who publish open access, and those who pay for or financially support it. The aim was to have conversations about funding equitable open access and surface the numerous conflicting motivations of stakeholders so we can start having an honest conversation about how we move forward and make progress.
In the June workshops and in responses to our survey, we are seeing how equity in open access is about much more than simply making it financially possible for all scholars to publish open access. (Although this seems hard enough on its own – just refer to these long recommendations on payment barriers for a start!)
Themes revealed so far
Primed with the notion that open to read and re-use is not enough on its own, many stakeholders (survey respondents and workshop participants) identified barriers that areadditional to the financial challenge of paying fees for open access. For example, this includes theinvisibility of work from scholars based in many countries, regions and contexts because:
- Largely speaking, only journal articles and books/book chapters are recognised and prioritised as valid and valuable scholarly outputs (leaving out a vast array of knowledge, from research data and code to activities and processes).
- Outputs in languages other than English are often dismissed and unrecognised;
- Decisions about what constitutes ‘quality’ scholarship and valid research outputs are often made by institutions and commercial actors that don’t represent the full diversity of the global research community.
These issues of invisibility, and solutions for it, came up as atop theme across our survey and all three workshops, including in the form of calls for fresh thinking around the indexing of scholarly work.
Other major points we heard were:
Researchers as a missing stakeholder group in these conversations, and the foundational importance of both open infrastructures and research assessment reform in enabling further progress towards open access.
Funding and business models for open access are an essential piece of the puzzle. More needs to be done to share and learn from what is working well, as well as to drive and facilitate further innovation in funding/business models to enable equitable open access. Decoupling payment/funding from the point of article acceptance; clarifying negotiating parties’ values and priorities upfront, and building ‘open publishing for all scholars’ into deals and funding arrangements – these were some ideas from our workshop conversations.
Do we agree on what equitable open access is, in the first place?
Largely, yes; OASPA received much support for the tri-part framework for open access presented as figure 1 in our project primer. However, scoping things too widely or too ambitiously to have meaningful impact, and the use of opaque and hard-to-grasp terminology were points of criticism, as was the (totally unintended but highly perceived) emphasis on science over the humanities and social sciences.
Taking on board inputs from those completing our open survey, as well as participants in the three ‘Next 50%’ workshops, we propose a revised ‘3D’ representation for equity in open access:
OASPA’s above adaptation of the framework by Pinfield (2024) arises thanks to feedback we have received so far. The labelling has been edited as all scholarly disciplines are important and included in this conversation (not just science). Edits have also been made to replace the terms ‘participatory’ and ‘epistemic’.
We hope this revised version clarifies that equitable open access means not just (1) making scholarly content freely and openly available for all to read and re-use, but also: improving the referencing, recognition, representation and, indeed, celebration of academic expertise (2) across all ways of knowing with (3) engagement and open contributions from/for all scholars in all world regions. Hence, open access in 3D as a framework to enable a global open access transition. If there are angles or dimensions we miss, please let us know!
A return to roots
Our proposed 3D framing for open access remains vastly ambitious in scope, but we may reasonably ask – how can a global open access transition be anything but? Notwithstanding the benefits of opening up ~50% of many peer-reviewed journal articles, a unilateral focus on the ‘all scholarly content’ dimension restricts us to a process of opening up some work of some scholars. This is a skewed version of the original goals of the open access movement: in 2002 the BOAI declaration talked about “uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge”; sharing learning across all people; and “securing [reader and author] benefits for all”. Zooming out to 3D returns the open access effort to its wider purpose, and provides a pathway to “accelerating research” and “enriching education”.
In one of the June 2025 workshops, participants talked about “returning open access to its roots”. So, we see the 3D framing as a reminder of the full breadth of intentions of open access. And we wish to restore this context to enable progress and action that each finds possible and meaningful.
We would love to know what you think of these sentiments along with our re-casting of the original framework.
What now?
This is an ongoing project and if you have more thoughts, please let us know by completing our open survey – accepting responses until 11 July.
Our project partners, Katie, Andrea, and Rob at Research Consulting, will be preparing a synthesis of workshop findings and survey data, so please make sure to send in your feedback by 11 July so your views can be included.
Findings from the project will be presented as part of an interactive feedback session at the OASPA 2025 conference taking place 22-24 September in Belgium. Here we will seek your inputs about delivering the ‘Next 50%’ on the road to full and equitable open access, and about what OASPA’s next steps should be.
It would be great to have you there to contribute to the debates and discussions, so we hope you will be able to register for OASPA2025 to take part.