Open Access Publishing in Astronomy - a Snapshot

We present an overview of Open Access publishing in astronomy. After a brief introduction to the wide-ranging read-access and the core journals in astronomy, we provide a viewgraph of publishing options in the OA era, including Green OA, Gold OA, Diamond OA, and the Rights Retention Strategy. Pros and cons of each model are explained, and the current status of major astronomy journals is described and evaluated. In conclusion, we strongly promote the implementation of fair, transparent, collaborative, and equitable Open Access models.

A main driver of the OA movement is to enable fair access to publications in a cost neutral way. Regrettably, most (commercial) publishers see APC-based OA as the most promising option to secure their business, which often results in higher costs than before, favours authors from wealthy organisations, is disruptive for authors, and leads to currently unanswered ethical questions regarding the distribution of available publishing budgets, such as who can publish, in which journals, how often, up to which costs? In contrast to the APC-based business model, collaborative OA models, for instance Subscribe to Open (S2O), exist. The authors of the poster argue that we must avoid a new dependancy on high-price commercial publishers and strive for transparent, equitable, sustainable, and inclusive models.

Open Access constitutes a paradigm shift in scholarly communication — we must find fair and equitable OA models now, or else we risk that three decades of work in favour of Open Access merely result in a new dependency on commercial publishers. The poster shows the many issues arising from APC-based OA models and emphasises the existence of better approaches in order to achieve global Open Access. Addressing all conference participants, but in particular librarians and researchers, we consider it of utmost importance that the community does not accept the current dominance of publisher-defined APC-based models prematurely. Librarians make strategic choices when enabling Open Access, and this strategic position should be used in order to strive for a collaborative, equitable, and sustainable publishing landscape.