by Sara Shariati
Graphic design by Josephine Choi
A few months ago, I received a message from a friend of mine in Iran, asking me to download a paper for her from Science. Their university does not have a subscription to scientific journals, and she could not afford to pay for the article. That incident made me think about how many people in developing countries and less affluent academic institutions do not have access to scientific publications. My friend told me that she usually emails the first author to get a copy of their article, but that method does not work when she needs to read a specific manuscript urgently. This incident raised many ethical questions for me related to the scientific publishing industry and access to knowledge.
The Pay-for-Access Model of Publishing
In the modern era, information is the currency of utmost value and access to knowledge is paramount. While people are being told to “do their own research” and “look at the facts” before making decisions, we must acknowledge that access to scientific articles is a privilege that not everyone has. The scientific publishing industry is crucial for knowledge dissemination, but paywalls restrict people’s access to the contents of scientific journals. According to the Times Higher Education, UK universities spent an average of £4 million on journal subscriptions in 2018.1 Only affluent institutions can afford to spend such money; thus, many students in developing nations struggle to access the top papers in their field or expand their skill set through self-learning. That is why many students appreciate websites, like Sci-hub, that provide them with access to the necessary information to continue their studies. Sci-hub was created to address the barriers and inequities in access to scientific knowledge, given the unwillingness of greedy scientific publishing companies to address these issues. It then should come as no surprise that this website has received a lot of backlash from these publishing companies.
While some argue that paying for access to scientific journals resembles paying for subscriptions to newspapers, there is an important distinction between the two that must be acknowledged: journalists who write news articles are paid by the newspaper, but authors of scientific papers are not paid by scientific journals. In fact, an increase in the number of subscribers to a scientific journal has no monetary benefit for the scientists whose work is published in the journal. Furthermore, reviewers of journals generally review the papers voluntarily. The expectation is that by giving their time and acting as a reviewer, scientists will benefit themselves by having other scientists review their papers in the future. This means the two most important pillars for any journal—the authors and reviewers—are not paid by the journal. Then, why should the readers pay for access to these articles? Journals claim that the money paid by subscribers is spent on in-house editors who work for the journals; however, that still does not justify the high subscription costs for these journals.
In 2015, The Guardian reported that approximately half the scientific publishing market is controlled by three publishers: Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley-Blackwell.2 Scientific publishing is a profitable business, which comes as no surprise given that the majority of contributors to these journals are not paid by the publisher. In fact, the top scientific publishing companies report profit margins of close to 40%, higher than Apple, Google, or Microsoft.3
Despite the controversies, scientists have to continue publishing for advancement of their careers. This “publish or perish” cycle means that scientists cannot boycott the publishers; scientists need grants to continue their work and receiving grants requires past publications. Furthermore, publications in certain prestigious journals, such as Nature, Cell, and Science, carry a higher weight compared to other journals, which helps maintain the oligopoly in the scientific publishing industry.
A journal’s “prestige” is measured by its impact factor. The impact factor measures the yearly number of citations of articles published over the last two years in a given journal. However, the impact factor has received its own share of criticisms, with many claiming that it is not a good representation of a journal’s performance or a measure of how valuable the individual articles in that journal are. First, the impact factor is affected by self-citing. Second, a high impact factor for a journal does not necessarily mean every article within it is incredibly valuable and well-written. Regardless, publishing in the big journals is a dream most aspiring scientists have, which helps maintain the current status in the scientific publishing industry.
The Open Access Model of Publishing
An alternative to the model of publishing involving paywalls, is a more recent model called “open access”. The open access (OA) movement emerged as a potential solution to the barriers to knowledge dissemination. The premise of OA is simple: make research articles freely accessible to all.
While this approach effectively dismantles the reader paywall, it introduces a new set of challenges. Specifically, the “Gold OA” model, where authors pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) to ensure free public access to their work, has shifted the financial onus from the reader to the researcher. While seemingly equitable in theory, in practice, the APCs in many reputable OA journals can be prohibitively high. For researchers with limited funding or those from developing nations, these costs become a formidable barrier to publication. In many Western countries, fees for publication in OA journals are included in grant applications, and scientists use their grants—often provided by government agencies—to pay for these fees. Given that these grants are generally created from taxpayers’ money, the public is essentially paying to read the results of the research funded by them, which is ironic because investors should have free access to the results of any project in which they are investing.
Additionally, the APC model has unintentionally given rise to predatory journals: publications that charge authors hefty fees but skimp on, or entirely bypass, the rigorous peer-review process, thus compromising the quality and integrity of scientific literature. These journals send spam emails to scientists, asking them to submit their papers for publication. Given the lack of any review process, these journals can give rise to scientific misinformation and conspiracy theories. Furthermore, these journals make it very difficult for readers, students, and researchers to discern credible sources of information from non-credible ones.
Essentially, no perfect solution exists at the moment for addressing the inequities and controversies of the scientific publishing industry. Both the pay-for-access and OA models are operating simultaneously in the industry at the moment. Meanwhile, some scientists have turned to social media for dissemination of their work. The role of content creation and social media could become even more pronounced in academia over the coming years. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, it is evident that a more equitable model—one that prioritizes broad access without compromising on quality or placing undue burden on researchers—is essential. As the global community becomes increasingly interconnected, ensuring that knowledge is shared freely and equitably is not just an academic concern but a moral imperative.
References
2. Buranyi, S. (2017). Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
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