Review of The Oligopoly's Shift to Open Access. How For-Profit Publishers Benefit from Article Processing Charges

This Zenodo record is a permanently preserved version of a PREreview. You can view the complete PREreview at https://prereview.org/reviews/7226232.

The paper by Butler et al. analysed the total cost paid by the scientific community to the oligopoly of 5 academic publishers in open access (OA) publication fees in 2015-2018. The results show how the number of gold and hybrid articles and the associated amount of APCs differ between countries and academic disciplines. The authors found that during this period the OA market has grown constantly for Springer-Nature, Elsevier, SAGE, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley. Thus, despite the fact that OA apologists seek to remove obstacles to the fair exchange of scientific information, these academic publishers have turned it into a new revenue stream.

The main strength of this paper is that the authors use a clear, transparent and well-described research methodology. The research data is presented in public access, which makes it possible to verify the presented results, and also allows continuing the research. Also, it should be noted the excellent visual representation of the results, which allows readers to understand these results more easily.

An important finding of the authors is also that depending on whether the publisher gets most of their revenue from gold or hybrid fees, we can be observed different OA strategies among publishers. Also, the authors found that the oligopoly of academic publishers charges more APCs for hybrid OA than for gold OA, which confirms the results of previous research.

Despite all the mentioned benefits of this paper, I also have two minor recommendations. 

First, in 2.1 Open Access models and trends mentioned only about OSTP Public Access memorandum (p. 4, lines 20-25). I propose also to briefly mention cOAlition S initiatives. The cOAlition S effort and especially the Plan S are thoroughly described in Conclusion and outlook section (p. 28), but I propose to add a brief mention in 2.1 too.

Second, in the paragraph about double-dipping (p. 5, lines 28-33), you can add that the publishers argue that the subscription and OA revenues sources are kept separate.

And although the Pinfield et al. (2016) results show that publishers are not entirely sincere about double-dipping practice (this paper already mentioned in the manuscript), perhaps it is worth indicating the position of academic publishers on this issue.

This manuscript definitely deserves publication in Quantitative Science Studies. This study helps to better understand the financial mechanisms of the functioning of the modern market of research publications. These results will be useful to researchers, publishers, policymakers, librarians, and research funding organizations to coordinate efforts to ensure immediate open access to scientific publications.

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23446