Advancing equity in research and publishing

Ensuring equity in publishing is one of the central challenges currently facing our sector. Equity is not just about access, pricing and funding to support authors, it is not just about including diverse participation as trusted editors and peer-reviewers from all regions and the sustainability of those journals and other scholarly communication channels that support this. Whilst these are the most evident ones, OA equity is multifaceted and needs all stakeholders across the research and publishing landscape to work together to tackle these issues head on, sustainably and effectively. 

Most of us now agree that OA should be the standard for scholarly communication. As recent data from STM shows, being able to publish gold OA has increased rapidly with authors having the opportunity in nearly 80% of cases globally. Yet whilst demand is there and progress has been made -there is much to do, from all actors, to get equity in OA publishing, where it should be. 

Our latest OA report considered several ways in which the publishing industry can support this:

Global  Transformative Agreement expansion

Whilst Transformative Agreements (TA), which bundle the cost of OA publishing with subscription deals, took some time to get traction and have come under recent criticisms, they are proven to be a key driver in not only the transition to OA, but the equitable and sustainable transition for many regions where OA has not been an option before. With their ability to eliminate author funding issues across all disciplines and regions we are now seeing accelerated take-up in countries like Colombia and Mexico, Botswana and South Africa, Thailand and India. But the benefit goes beyond increased uptake and country transitions. As data from STM shows, TAs are increasing the number of OA articles published each year (almost 300,000 in 2023), and as our TA data showed,  are increasing access for those researchers who may not have had access to articles if behind a paywall -  70% of Springer Nature TA content downloads in 2023 came from anonymised users. The data speaks for itself, TAs continue to have a direct and substantial impact on driving forward an equitable OA landscape.

Experimenting with new journal models and approaches to OA

OA is not a one size fits all approach, and whereas TAs are frequently working well,  regions, countries, researchers and partners are all different. As the publisher of many community journals and some of the first fully OA journals which set standards for the industry,  we obviously believe that experimentation with new scalable, high integrity models is also key to evolving OA. 

One such example is the portfolio of  Cureus journals. Their innovative publishing model allows well-drafted, relevant submissions to publish peer-reviewed OA articles for free and others to only pay for the editing services they need. In 2023 these journals published over 17,000 OA articles, a third free of charge and two thirds at an average cost of US$340, a viable price in many LMICs.

We and other publishers have a long track record of providing waivers and discounts for many and exploring a choice of publishing options. Springer Nature continues to publish a number of diamond OA journals, which thanks to alternative transparent funding arrangements, enable authors to publish OA free of charge. In 2023 over 10,000 OA articles were published free of charge to their authors. Alongside this we waived over €26 million APCs in our Full OA Journals and, via our Nature fund, we enabled authors from 70 LICs or LMICs to automatically qualify for APC waivers upon the acceptance of their articles in Nature or a Nature Research Journal. 

Most recently, in March 2024 we also started a new OA pricing pilot based on a country-tiered APC pricing initiative to address affordability on a more sustainable and scalable basis. We are excited to learn from this and see how we can make this work for as many researchers as possible.

Broader and diverse participation in research 

Beyond improving affordability, as an academic community, we also have a responsibility to ensure broader participation in knowledge generation. As we increasingly use OA to break down barriers to access, so we should all be committed to also breaking down the barriers to full participation and representation of all researchers in the research publishing system. 

This is something that our sector takes very seriously, with industry commitments such as the Publisher Association's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) plan or the Joint commitment for action on inclusion and diversity in publishing. Springer Nature, like others, has remained focused on delivering on our commitments to DEI. As part of this we published a benchmark report on the diversity of our academic editors. We can see some progress, especially in recruiting new editors from a broader regional base, but there continues to be much to do, and here we are using our new DEI in Research Publishing hub to support our editors, providing free resources to help address unconscious bias and building awareness of the changing global research community.

Publishers absolutely have a role to play in ensuring there are sustainable, equitable OA publishing options that meet the needs of all authors. But as I have said before, for OA and ultimately open science to fulfill its potential, it needs action by all to scale sufficiently and address the challenges that many face, to ensure that  OA is truly inclusive for all researchers, wherever they are. 

This piece was originally published in print as part of the Frankfurt Book Fair Dailies and later online in Bookbrunch.