Advancing open access

Open access is an integral part of how Elsevier supports researchers in advancing knowledge. With more than 800 fully open access journals, nearly all 2,900 journals offering open access options, and authors in more than 2,000 institutions benefiting from transformative open access agreements, more than 30% of the 630,000 articles published by Elsevier in 2023 were open access.

Open access publishing has become what Laura Hassink, Managing Director for Journals at Elsevier, calls “part of the daily work” for publishers and researchers:

In the past, we were primarily known as a subscription publisher with some open access options, whereas now we offer a wide choice and flexibility for every researcher and institution around the world that wants to publish open access. And we do this with reliable tools and processes for both without ever compromising on research quality, integrity and value.

1. Expanding choice: journals and agreements

One of the key elements in embedding open access at Elsevier — and more broadly around the world — is ensuring that authors have a meaningful choice of where to publish.

Laura explained: “One of the biggest changes is that we’ve really expanded the choice of quality journals where authors can publish. With Elsevier now offering more than 800 fully open access journals, and all other journals in our portfolio also offering open access options, we’ve closed most of the gaps.

“Ultimately, our focus is on making sure that whatever preference researchers, institutions or funders have, we can find a solution that meets their needs.”

Another change in recent years has been the emergence of transformative agreements, which have been effective in progressing open access at scale. Through these agreements, institutions and consortia work with scholarly publishers to achieve their reading and open access publishing goals in one holistic contract.

Stuart Whayman, Managing Director, Researchers & Librarians at Elsevier, commented:

As well as providing authors with the wide choice they need, we also work to support institutional, funder or country-level goals and preferences around open access through commercial arrangements. Transformative agreements that address an institution’s reading and open access publishing needs have really gained momentum over the last five years, although uptake varies around the world.

As an example, Stuart noted that while Europe has almost fully transitioned to open access, the US had seen less uptake. Following the 2022 announcement from the Office of Science and Technology Policy opens in new tab/window (OSTP) — which mandates that US universities make publications and supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible — open access in the US has started to gather more momentum.

“Over the last year or so, we’ve seen a significant uptick in interest from institutions in the US to enable their authors to publish open access,” Stuart said. “It’s not uniform and it’s not exactly comparable to Europe, but we are seeing a change.”

Laura noted that the pace of change in the US is likely to accelerate as other parts of the research ecosystem respond to the OSTP memo: “We already see a bit more OA activity on the institutional side. Funding bodies are now translating the OSTP mandate into funding guidelines. This is a slow process, but we expect a further acceleration of OA activity once these guidelines are rolled out.”

2. Creating a smoother experience for researchers and librarians

“The number one factor for an author deciding where to publish is the scope and quality of the journal,” Laura explained. “There’s a range of factors, but that’s number one. Then there are often requirements from funders on how to publish, so the author might be required to publish in an open access journal.”

In that case, as Laura describes it, once author choice, funding guidelines and institutional agreements are in place, adoption of open access accelerates. Publishers have an essential role to play in bringing those elements together:

That’s where we’ve really stepped up as a publisher. What we’ve tried to do is recognize who the author is at the point of submission so that we’re able to guide them through the submission process in line with their needs. If they’re an author in the Netherlands, we can say, ‘You’re part of this country-wide deal, so you can publish open access in this journal with no additional fee.’

As well as creating a smoother experience for authors, Elsevier has also invested in tools to make workflow and reporting more seamless for librarians, especially in an environment where the role of the librarian is evolving.

Stuart added: “If you think about the publishing process historically, the people who have been involved with it previously are authors, editors and reviewers. But in an OA environment, the librarian plays a significant role. They’re signing off on article publishing charges, and they need to understand who is using different resources, whether the faculty members are getting what they need, whether budget is being allocated effectively. ... So we’ve developed our workflows to help librarians monitor spend and report on their institution’s publishing trends.”

3. Quality and integrity are paramount

Open access has reshaped the librarian role in other ways, too, Stuart said. In an era when predatory journals opens in new tab/window charge authors fees to publish in journals with zero, or superficial, quality control, librarians can help researchers find reputable journals to publish and share their research.

Laura commented on Elsevier’s own commitment to quality:

Our editorial and peer review process, the concept of editorial independence, etc., are exactly the same for all our journals regardless of whether they are open access or subscription. We have very strict standards of rigor and ethics in our publishing to protect the quality and integrity of research. We use a combination of human oversight, expertise and technology to help detect and filter out articles that have integrity issues or should not be published for other reasons early in the process.

Each year, Elsevier receives around 3 million research papers from authors. Whether published open access or via subscription model, they are all rigorously reviewed by our in-house editorial teams in collaboration with 33,000 editors and 1.5 million expert reviewers around the world. The result: over 630,000 articles in 2023 enhanced, indexed, certified, published and promoted following peer review.

4. Reducing barriers to equitable participation in open access

As Stuart pointed out, uptake of open access varies around the world, and this is certainly the case in the Global South, mainly because of funding challenges.

To help tackle this, in 2023, Elsevier introduced the industry-first Geographical Pricing for Open Access pilot to support authors in low- and middle-income countries with equitable options. The initiative tailors pricing structures according to Gross National Income per capita and in doing so aims to reduce financial barriers that have traditionally hindered researchers and institutions from publishing the latest research open access.

Stuart elaborated: “We’ve long been committed to pricing article publishing charges below market average relative to comparable quality. We wanted to go further and explore whether we can reduce barriers for authors to publish open access. Historically, there’s been one APC globally, and the question we’re asking is: ‘If you flex that price based on an economic measure by geography, does it reduce barriers for authors in low- and middle-income countries to publish gold open access?”

Laura added: “Last year, we waived or discounted costs for nearly 80% of authors from the Global South through our active participation in initiatives like Research4Life. As a publisher, we want to ensure researchers and healthcare professionals across the world are able to read our content and also publish their research with us, and we continue to work on solutions to accomplish that.”