Open access publishing in chemistry: A practical perspective informing new education

In the late 1990s chemists were among the early adopters of open access
(OA) publishing. As it happened with preprints, the early successful
adoption of OA publishing from chemists subsequently slowed down. In
2016 chemistry was found to be the discipline with the lowest fraction
of OA papers amid papers in all fields published between 2009 and 2015.
To benefit from open science in terms of enhanced citations,
collaboration, job and funding opportunities, chemistry scholars need
updated information (and education) on open science of practical
relevance. Suggesting avenues for quick uptake of OA publishing from
chemists in both developed and developing countries, this study offers a
critical perspective on academic publishing in the chemical sciences
that will be useful to inform the aforementioned education.


Introduction
In the late 1990s, chemistry scholars were among the first adopters of open access (OA) publishing in the early digital era, namely of publishing scientific articles in journals freely accessible on the internet. Publishing scientific articles accessible without restrictions greatly improves the visibility of the freely available study. Accordingly, in a 2004 study comparing the number of citations of articles in physics published between 1992 and 2002 and subsequently made OA by self-archiving with the citations of articles from the same journals that were not made OA by their authors, Harnad and Brody first unveiled that the OA/non-OA citation ratio varied between 2. 5 11 The first study on preprints in chemistry was published in 2017 in OA format 12 followed by an update in 2020 reporting the slow rise of preprints in the chemical sciences. 13 Suggesting avenues for quick and effective uptake of OA publishing by research chemists in both developed and developing countries, this article offers an updated critical perspective on academic publishing in the chemical sciences that will be useful to inform the previously mentioned new education.

Current state of open access publishing in chemistry
By early November 2020, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 144 OA journals for the subject 'chemistry', 72 of which did not levy any APCs. 14 Table 2 lists selected titles and the journals' fields of study.
'waiting on average nine months before publication, is no longer tenable in chemistry'  In chemistry too, there are significant differences in APCs across a range of OA journals ( Table 4). As was recently shown by economics scholars, this large variance is not explained by the cost of production but by other drivers, collectively identified by the scholars as 'market power'. 21 In detail, the average APC can be modelled as a constant term of $768.1, interpreted as the production cost of processing an article for an OA journal, plus the JIF × 132.5 (a oneunit increase of the JIF increases the APC by $132.5), plus the compound effect of being a big publisher amounting to $447.6 + $1.13 × pub. age + big. pub., namely the product of publisher age and size because age only counts in combination with being a big publisher (otherwise age increases average APC by only $1.13).

The structure of the chemistry publishing industry
In 2017, trying to answer the question why scholars continued 'to give their labour -as authors, referees and editors -to publishing firms that do not, in fact, circulate knowledge widely and affordably', 22 a team of scholars in open science suggested that: 'The answer lies in a lack of detailed understanding among academics of the historical and economic forces at play in academic publishing; and in the success with which big publishers have learned how to make themselves apparently indispensable to the academic prestige economy.'

Rank Publisher
Average citation Data in Table 5 show the average citations per article over a three-year window (2017-2019) for the 20 largest publishers by volume (total documents in 2019). 23 The American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry, each publishing tens of subscription journals, lead the ranking. Furthermore, referring to articles published by those societies over the previous three-year window (2015-2017), the average number of citations per paper was substantially higher for subscription journals when compared to OA journals.
These two facts alone help to explain why in 2018 some 74% of chemistry articles were still published in subscription journals. Chemistry is the most concentrated segment of the scientific publishing industry with, in 2013, only five publishers publishing more than 70% of chemistry studies. 24 With 207 journals from 20 publishers, chemistry was recently found to be the third (after multidisciplinary and space science) scientific discipline in terms of market concentration, measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index.
Another highly reputed learned society, the American Physical Society, ranks third among the largest 20 publishers, classified by number of average citations received by articles published in 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Table 5). In this case, however, the number of citations of articles published in OA journals is almost twice as high as that in non-OA journals. The reason is due to the fact that physicists are familiar with OA papers thanks both to preprints posted in arXiv since the early 1990s and widespread use of 'green' self-archiving.

Openly accessible, impactful science
'If you include journal impact factors in the list of publications in your curriculum', wrote Curry citing Seglen's 1992 work 25 showing the highly skewed pattern of citation distribution 'the success with which big publishers have learned how to make themselves apparently indispensable to the academic prestige economy' 'Chemistry is the most concentrated segment of the scientific publishing industry with, in 2013, only five publishers publishing more than 70% of chemistry studies' for which only a few papers in a journal account for most of the journal's total citations, 'you are statistically illiterate'. 26 Given the fact that universities and research bodies continue to use the JIF and other citation-based metrics such as the h-index 27 to evaluate researchers and for granting research funds, it is not surprising that researchers continue to strive to publish in high JIF journals.
For example, over a few months some 34,000 biologists signed the online petition initiative by Varmus, Brown and Eisen calling for all scientists, by late 2000, to 'pledge that, beginning in September 2001, we will publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date'. 28 Actually, most signatories continued to publish their work in paywalled journals (and to review journal manuscripts for free, as well).

Outlook and conclusions
OA academic publishing is thriving. With over 106,000 articles published in one year, MDPI, an OA multidisciplinary publisher jointly established by a former research chemist in 1996, in 2019 became the world's fifth largest academic publisher. 31 The APCs charged by the publisher for its journals, many of which are devoted to chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science, are in the order of CHF1,600-1,800.
Most publishers of 'gold' OA journals offer discounts on the APCs, for example to scholars submitting from developing countries, and even waive them in certain cases. However, given the APC levels shown in Table 4, it may not be surprising to learn that even in the U.S., a 'today's scholars are, in large part, unaware of the possibilities offered by today's scholarly communication' wealthy nation leading global scientific production for over a century, OA publishing in journals levying an APC is used by a disproportionately larger proportion of professors at elite institutions, 32 namely at research centres receiving huge grants.
With the early success of the Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS), publishing some 500 studies from scholars based in 51 countries two years after its launch in August 2000, 33  Like other scholars in the basic sciences, chemistry researchers are also interested in citations which play a central role in review, promotion and tenure procedures used by their employers. 36 By quickly fulfilling the 'unused potential for green OA', chemistry scholars should make their articles openly accessible through self-archiving on institutional or personal websites and publish their papers in preprint form. Beyond recording a rapid increase in the number of citations, those scholars will enjoy the benefits of open science in terms of enhanced collaboration, job and funding opportunities, 37 as well as enhanced citations and online attention. 38 In other words, rather than paying the APCs of 'gold' OA journals, chemistry scholars should take advantage of the new tools provided by the internet and by progress in scholarly communication, and freely publish their own work first as preprint and then in any journal not levying an APC, namely 'platinum' OA journals, or even in paywalled journals. After the embargo period (often 12 months, but for certain journals 24 months), the article will be made openly accessible on the internet by self-archiving it.
In promotion and tenure processes, chemistry scholars are chiefly evaluated based on research, with evaluation often failing to reward teaching and service, thereby devaluing faculty work in those areas. 39 By making their work openly accessible, the same scholars will drive improvement in all of the citation-based metrics which are still narrowly used to evaluate them, freeing time for teaching, sharing of knowledge with the public, writing books and grant proposals and preparing teaching materials to foster student creativity in the digital age. 40 Inexorably, then, thanks to widespread uptake of OA publishing, research chemists will start to value the benefits of open scholarship including the sharing of educational resources, 41 thereby dramatically improving outcomes in all three main fields of academic activity: research, education and service to society.

Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to Dr Elena Giglia, University of Turin, for all she has done to promote the uptake of open science in Italy. The author would like to thank Professor Stevan Harnad, Université du Québec à Montréal, for helpful correspondence on the topics of this article.

Abbreviations and Acronyms
A list of the abbreviations and acronyms used in this and other Insights articles can be accessed here -click on the URL below and then select the 'full list of industry A&As' link: http://www.uksg.org/publications#aa.
'the vast majority of chemists still do not self-archive research papers, thereby losing the opportunities for enhanced use and citation of their own work' 'rather than paying the APCs of 'gold' OA journals, chemistry scholars should … freely publish their own work first as preprint and then in any journal not levying an APC'