Examples of inclusive practices in Open Access Publishing

Last updated in November 2024, here are examples of inclusive OA practices across a variety of disciplines, regions and publishing contexts. Many examples in this post demonstrate practices that are recommended by OASPA under the following goals:

• Goal #1: Enabling OA for all scholars
• Goal #2: Evolving Pricing, Purchasing, Funding and Investment practices
• Goal #3: Transparency
• Goal #4: Reducing Barriers and Burdens in OA workflows

In addition, OASPA’s Wayfinder sessions discuss making OA publishing more inclusive. Each recording is 60-75 minutes long.

Examples in the rest of this post connect with headline goals under OASPA’s recommended practices to address financial and workflow barriers to OA publishing. If you have an update to make to the information below, OR if you know of an example that is missing, please let us know so we can update the list.

Goal 1: Enabling OA for all scholars

Goal #1: Developing, supporting and preserving OA that is decoupled from author-facing fees to read or to publish will help enable OA for all scholars. Greater inclusion is achieved if the ability to publish OA is available to all researchers, without exception.

Examples of practice as inspiration

Each of these meet some aspect(s) of OASPA’s recommendations under goal #1:

• The Subscribe2Open community of practice reports OA for current/future years’ content across nearly 200journals, a majority of which are already delivering full OA without author-facing fees or per-publication charges. Publishers include university presses, commercial publishers, not-for-profits and learned societies – publishing content in multiple disciplines from the humanities and social sciences to biosciences, mathematics and other subjects. 100s of libraries pay to support publication of these journals on an OA basis.
• PLOS’ Community Action Publishing model aims to cover costs of selective OA journals by distributing costs, rather than have individual authors pay high APCs to cover the cost of selective publishing. Member institutions commit to a flat annual fee, and cost to participate is assessed based on publication needs of both corresponding and contributing authors. Fees are scaled to meet a transparent cost recovery target. Revenue exceeding community targets goes back to members at renewal.
• CSIR-NIScPR (Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research) is a research institution in India publishing several research journals that cover a wide range of topics in science and technology. These titles are freely accessible online to researchers and scholars across the world. The journals do not levy article processing charges, and are funded by the Government of India.
• Bloomsbury is offering a library-facing collective-action model for books via their Bloomsbury Open Collections programme; as a result 10 monographs are OA in 2024 with no researcher-facing charges. Authors from low-income countries, unaffiliated authors, and early-career researchers, and authors who are otherwise unable to pay BPCs, are prioritised.
• Central European University (CEU) Press, in partnership with the COPIM project, is using the Opening the Future (OtF) initiative to progress towards a fully OA frontlist of books without author fees as a requirement.
• The African Human Rights journal publishes OA content under a CC BY licence and does not charge article processing fees of any kind. It is published by PULP – Pretoria University Law Press.
• Preprints allow all scholars to share work openly without being charged. Examples include SciELO Preprints, bioRxiv, arXiv and several others. Content is not peer-reviewed.
• Redalyc.org is an OA journal index and articles’ hosting platform for >1700 journals and authors from over 130 countries without author-facing fees or per-publication charges. This network is enabled by the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (including via a grant to the university from the Arcadia fund) and is also supported by other higher-education institutions, research centres, professional associations and Ibero-American publishers.
• The African Platform for Open Scholarship is a platform for the African research community to share scholarly content that contributes to the growth and development of local research. It includes journals as well as books and monographs that are published open access without reader-facing or author-facing fees.

Examples of intent and conversation:

• The Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC’s) commitment to transition to 100% OA clarifies that in doing so they will work toward “a model where the author does not pay article processing charges”. Co-development with libraries to develop new models is described in a presentation from the RSC within this online seminar in April 2024.
• PeerJ released an Annual Institutional Membership offering in 2023 with the stated aim of reducing and ultimately eliminating APCs.
• OA2020 convened a series of workshops on global equity in OA publishing from the research funder/producer perspectives. Key goals include ensuring that funders and institutions (rather than authors) pay the costs for open access publishing services; and that spending on publishing should enable global OA by both readers and authors.

Goal 2: Examples of Evolving Pricing / Purchasing / Funding Practices

Goal #2: Stakeholders can reduce inequity by developing and supporting more inclusive pricing, purchasing and funding practices. Where any type of fees are charged to any stakeholder, differentiated pricing from publishers can help cater to varying affordability and funding levels. Commitment of funds for equitable, reliable OA is needed to enable reading and OA-publishing for all scholars in all world regions.

Examples as inspiration for publishing organisations

Each of these meet some aspect(s) of OASPA’s recommended practices under goal #2:

• Elsevier’s Geographical Pricing for OA model uses differentiated pricing based on Gross National Incomes (GNI) of countries.
• Among other factors, differential prices are based on the type of institution in the US for supporting library membership from punctum books.
• The library-facing ACM open model was introduced following consultations with libraries. Pricing is based on, and allows for unlimited OA publishing for, the institutional output/publications from affiliated authors (2024 bands and tiers available here).
• The PLOS Global Equity model has tiered pricing based on an institution’s output and geographical location. Tiering is transparently shared and visible to all, as is the cost recovery target. The price is tiered depending on size, published output and geographical location of the institution. Authors based at institutions at Research4Life countries are automatically included, and do not face APCs.

Examples of pricing and assessment tools – inspiration for those who purchase / fund / invest in OA publishing:

• This pricing framework (July 2024) considers affordability/ability to pay across different economies with an out-of-the-box pricing example, and tips for setting more equitable pricing. The work was funded by cOAlition S and developed by Information Power in consultation with international consortia and libraries.
• Evaluation frameworks helping those who purchase / fund / invest in OA publishing assess where to direct funds include these tools that launched September 2024: The Library Partnership Rating (with some publisher ratings already released) and the “How Equitable is It” framework.
• The POSI principles (V1.1 in Nov 2023) set out markers of trust and openness for open infrastructure.

Goal 3: Examples of Describing Models and Pricing with Accuracy, Details & Transparency

Goal #3: Knowing how OA publishing is sustained and what underpins pricing will
help those who purchase, fund, or invest in OA publishing, and researchers, to make informed choices. This will foster the trust needed to enable financial support for more inclusive OA models. This goal, therefore, has two parts: (1) How is your OA publishing funded and/or paid for? (2) How are prices (if any) determined?

Examples as inspiration

The examples given here meet some aspects of what is being recommended under goal #3 of OASPA’s recommendations:

• A table carrying average cost per (book) title is made available by Open Book Publishers, who also update their website annually with figures for the most recent financial year.
• EMBO financial transparency data explains revenues and costs of publishing for the European Molecular Biology Organization; surplus made from publishing is evident in graphics for 2022 and data for 2023.
• The Royal Society’s transparent pricing policy demonstrates how pricing is set, confirming avoidance of double dipping.
• EDP sciences released a transparency report for its Subscribe2Open (S2O) program in 2023 clarifying revenues, costs, and deficit position of their mathematics portfolio (see pgs 14, 15, and 16), and revealing the S2O renewals target for keeping 2023 content open.
• The Direct to Open model from MIT Press ensures transparent and dynamic fees, meaning, if total participation exceeds the financial goal, the Press reduces the fees for all participating libraries.
• The Library Partnership Subsidy program from the Open Library of Humanities provides clarity about publishing costs and revenues, including price banding details and further information for supporters (or for those who may wish to take up supporter membership in the future).
• The cOAlition S Journal Comparison Service provides standardised, comparable data on list prices for APCs, subscriptions, and more (from publishing organisations) to libraries, consortia & research funders.

Examples as inspiration for composing jargon-free sentences to describe routes to OA:

E.g. 1: All content is published open-access (OA) under a CC BY licence thanks to [X]. No author-facing charges apply. We also offer/receive [ABC] to sustain OA-publishing in [title].

E.g. 2: “Our books are published open-access (OA) mostly thanks to [X]. Where authors have grant funding available for OA publishing, we request a voluntary contribution to keep our open-access operation sustainable and open for all.”

In these two examples, [X] could be “funds from supporting libraries,” or a foundation/society/institution, or other sources. [ABC] could be a chargeable service offered, such as advertising, or some form of funding or a subsidy received, such as a grant OR charge-free/subsidised resources such as staff, premises, or infrastructure.

E.g. 3: “[Journal] publishes both subscription and open-access (OA) content. Corresponding authors affiliated with paying institutions could benefit from OA publishing without charges [check if you qualify]. Other submissions will be published behind a paywall (no charge) OR optional OA-publication is possible via payment of an article publishing charge of [$YY]. Exemptions to OA charges are described in our [waiver policy]. In all cases, publication is subject to the outcome of independent peer-review.

E.g. 4: “[This publisher] aims to be fully open-access (OA) without charging authors any fees. This relies on achieving a funding target of [Z] via [our supporters]. You may face a fee to publish OA depending on funding levels. If this happens, you will be notified during submission; exemptions to OA charges are described in our [waiver policy].”

In these two examples, underlined text denotes hyperlinks to relevant information on the publisher site.

Goal 4: Examples of Reducing Barriers and Burdens in OA Workflows

Goal #4: Publisher policy, editorial workflows, sales data, and waiver programs can be harnessed to reduce barriers and burdens in OA publishing, and ensure unfunded/underfunded researchers in any country, and with any affiliation, have a simple and smooth pathway to publishing OA. Workflows should preemptively apply discounted, waived, or charge-free OA whenever these scenarios are based on fixed rules – e.g., affiliation, geography, sales agreements. In addition to accurate information on websites, any waiver/discount information should be made clear to authors during submission. Policy could include voluntary contributions or free/discounted OA publishing for any scholar in need.

Examples as inspiration

The examples given here meet some aspects of what is being recommended under goal #4 of OASPA’s recommended practices:

• As an example of waivers extending across full and hybrid OA titles, Bioscientifica has a geographic-based waiver and discounting policy that extends across both APC-based fully-OA titles and hybrid journals. (Scroll down to the waiver section to view.)
• The Cambridge Open Equity Initiative is a pilot running to 31 December 2024 from Cambridge University Press. It supports charge-free OA publishing, across full and hybrid OA journals, for authors in over 100 countries, with eligibility automatically established (based on country of author location) during the editorial process.
• Separate from its geographic-based waiver policy, SpringerNature has an additional waiver policy based on financial need for any author – although this only applies to fully-OA journals on the APC model.
• The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has a dedicated author-waiver fund for its fully OA journals and provides details about applying (including what authors should expect in the editorial/submission system) on its webpage detailing discounts and waiver policy.
• The journal Nature Communications operates under a funding-accessible waiver policy for authors in countries with limited funding access to pay fees, in addition to a sponsorship waiver scheme for authors funded by specific organizations.

Examples as inspiration for communicating waiver policies in language an author might expect to see:

E.g. 1: Authors who are eligible for financial waivers or discounted OA fees may qualify based on country of origin, financial need, or institutional or project funding. Full details are available in our waiver policy.

E.g. 2: Eligible authors can apply for discounted or waived OA fees based on a variety of factors, including financial need, country of origin, or funding opportunities. Refer to our full waiver policy for eligibility and application instructions.