This post is written by Adéle Strydom, Juanita Mellet, Jeanne Van Rensburg, and Michael S. Pepper from the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Department of Immunology and SAMRC Extramural Unit for Stem Cell Research and Therapy at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

  • **The problem: **The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the unequal publication of global research outputs.
  • **Why it matters: **Open access publishing needs to be accessible and affordable to all.
  • **The solution: **Affordable open access publishing should be made available through governments, the scientific publishing industry, local and international funders and organisations.

In defining ‘open science’ as “enabling access, utilisation and sharing of publicly funded research outputs and data to all levels of society”, the draft National Open Science Policy for South Africa, also described by Gallager et al. (2020), clearly outlines six aspects that form the foundation for open science. These include ‘open access’, ‘open data’, ‘open source’, ‘open resources’, ‘open methods’, and ‘open review’. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an important opportunity for open science and open access to results from global scientific research. Consequently, demand for freely accessible COVID-19 research led to an increase in preprint repositories and preprints became a major distribution platform for research outputs. The value of preprints remains controversial.

Open access to research material has significantly accelerated the pace of research which directly informs public health policies and reduces the gap between academics and the public (Brierley, 2021; Watson, 2022). However, this opens the door to predatory journal activity and misinformation dissemination through social media. Although predatory journals are open access, they may provide information that is not evidence-based (misinformation), their articles are not adequately peer reviewed, and their published research is hidden from scientists because they are not indexed in well-known databases (Vervoort et al., 2021). The high costs associated with both open access (authors) and journal subscriptions (readers) have resulted in more publications in predatory journals and more predatory journals per se, which has accelerated public access to sub-optimal information (Vervoort et al., 2020; Vervoort et al., 2021).

Open access: a solution with a significant cost problem

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the unequal publication of global research outputs. The contributions made by African countries to COVID-19 publications between November 2019 and August 2020 totalled 3%. South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria provided 65% of the COVID-19 articles written by Africans. Meanwhile, 20% of the African COVID-19 publications had no African authors, and over 66% of authors on African papers were non-African (Kana et al., 2021; Naidoo et al., 2021). This raises the question: is open access publishing truly accessible and affordable to all? The answer, unfortunately, is no.

The subscription-based publishing model allows authors to publish for free, but readers need individual or institutional subscriptions to access the content. In other words, the journal limits access and consequently citations (which lead to recognition and progression) as this is dependent on reader subscriptions. With open access publishing, the responsibility of payment for access to research publications and associated resources has shifted from readers to authors. This approach results in significant advantages for citations, as well as freely available access to publications and other research resources; however, the article processing charges (APCs) requested from authors are very high relative to fund availability and currency conversions for many countries, and even more so for low-to-middle income countries (LMIC).

A fair system?

As an example, Nature journals charge up to €9,500 to make research papers open access as an alternative to subscription-only publishing. At a Euro-Rand conversion rate of R17.00 per €1.00, this translates to approximately R161,500.00 per publication, accounting for over 16% of a one million Rand budget. This percentage cost is equivalent to one high-end publication from a Euro-budget of approximately €60,000. This highlights one of the major financial challenges for researchers in LMICs, who are not only expected to produce high quality research, but also to ensure that findings are available in high-impact open access journals.

Although South Africa is one of the leading African countries when it comes to open access publishing, government policies and open access initiatives in academic and research institutions, the high APCs exacerbate the disparities between fully funded and partially or unfunded research. Many African researchers earn a limited income or receive limited to no research grants to publish in high-impact open access journals (Nabyonga-Orem et al., 2020). African researchers are additionally hindered by local and international challenges, such as a lack of full-time researchers and inadequate investments in research infrastructure, capacity, and governance. International research collaborations may exploit African researchers, researchers are unable to attract international research funding that covers APCs as eligible research expenditures, and female researchers are affected by gender restrictions (Nabyonga-Orem et al., 2020).

In order to improve the research outputs from Africa, some journals provide partial or full waivers to researchers from LMICs (Nabyonga-Orem et al., 2020; Vervoort et al., 2021). Unfortunately, fee waiver decisions are based on the per capita income of the country in which all authors reside. Sometimes, researchers from LMICs do not qualify for waivers because the manuscript includes co-authors from high-income countries (HICs), whether or not funding for publications was received from the co-authors. Researchers from middle-income countries, such as South Africa and Brazil, are often excluded from partial or full waivers, thus requiring them to cover APCs in full. African researchers have no option but to pay APCs using personal funds when they do not have access to research funding. Alternatively, articles can be published in journals with lower impact factors and APCs, or be published in subscription-only formats where citations will be negatively affected but costs to authors notably reduced. The high APCs associated with publishing open access in high impact journals may restrict African researchers from publishing in these journals. Even where funding is available, the costs of open access publishing are often prohibitive.

Urgent and necessary reforms

Should African researchers turn to their governments, to the scientific publishing industry, or to local and international funders to solve these problems? Nabyonga-Orem et al. (2020) offer three possible reforms:

  • “First, to provide fair and equitable opportunity for researchers in LMICs. Governments and funders need to invest in health research and support researchers with grants and appropriate remuneration. They should strengthen research governance and foster mutually beneficial research collaborations.”
  • “Second, the rationale for fees, discounts and waivers should be more transparent; it should take into consideration the researchers’ salaries and whether they have access to grants.”
  • “Third, build an African academic publishing infrastructure that will require efforts led by African researchers, in partnership with international colleagues, and that will be supported by the scientific publishing industry, by African governments and by local and international funders.”

Currently, the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) has 12,290 open access journals that do not require APCs indexed on their database. This may be misleading and the nature of these journals needs to be closely scrutinised. Open access policies should be amended and the cost of open access publishing should be reduced. Solutions for more affordable open access publishing should be made available through governments, the scientific publishing industry and local and international funders and organisations. Partnerships between HIC and LMIC researchers should be developed and existing partnerships should be expanded to support research in LMICs. Governments should make provision for publication costs through grants and provide opportunities for research visibility in LMICs.

Plan S is an open access publishing initiative that aims to make research immediately available on publication. Some funding agencies have implemented open access publishing models and punish researchers that do not comply with these policies (Else, 2018). Journals that implement open access publishing models should be encouraged to reduce APCs. Opportunities for open access publishing should be created through organisations and funding bodies to support authors who receive little or no funding (Vervoort et al., 2021). Several European funders are trying a new ‘read-and-publish’ approach to make research free through a single fee to cover both reading and open access publishing (Else, 2018). Wellcome Open Research is a Wellcome Trust platform that allows Wellcome-funded researchers to publish for free. The manuscripts are subjected to invited and open peer review and APCs are fully covered by Wellcome (Newton, 2020). The World Health Organisation has a portal that provides access to over 16,000 journals for LMIC institutions for free or at a lower cost (Newton, 2020). This way of publishing could be adopted but requires further consideration.

In summary, it is critical to ensure that research from under-resourced areas gains adequate visibility, and while open access is encouraged to achieve this objective, resources must be provided to ensure that this is both equitable and tenable.

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