A few economic figures may help to explain why chemistry scholars showed
reluctance to adopt open science practices, including pre-publishing
their work in preprint form after the early successful attempts with the
Chemistry Preprint Server [5]. It is enough to ask even a prolific
author in the chemical sciences if she/he knows what is the cost paid by
her/his institution’s library to access a chemistry journal, and what is
the market concentration level of the publishing industry in chemistry.
Most often, she/he will be generally surprised to learn that chemistry
has historically recorded the highest average journal serial
prices [33]; and that in 2020 the average price for chemistry
journals, exceeding the $6,300 threshold, was the highest amid all
disciplines (Table 4). For comparison, in 2016 the average price for
chemistry journals was $5,105 [34]. Similarly, a few chemistry
scholars are aware that only five publishing organisations control
publishing of more than 70% of chemistry studies [8].
Today, chemistry scholars can publish their work in preprint form on
several preprint servers including ChemRxiv, Preprints, SSRN, Authorea,
ResearchSquare, Zenodo, Beilstein Archives, OSF Preprints, ResearchGate
and many others. Learning that preprints differ only slightly in
comparison to peer reviewed journal articles for all the basic sciences
(physics, mathematics, chemistry and biology) further supports the
widespread adoption of preprints amid scholars of all basic sciences,
including chemistry.
I agree with Polka [35] and with other open science researchers
[36] who found that the key challenge for the transition to open
science is cultural change. To effectively foster said cultural change
requires, in its turn, to expand the education of doctoral students and
young researchers to include scholarly communication in the digital age
[37]. The preliminary findings of this study will contribute to
inform the curriculum of the aforementioned new courses for young
chemistry scholars, eventually promoting accelerated innovation in
chemistry [38], and the associated social, economic and
environmental benefits due to the fact that chemistry, unique amid all
basic sciences, originates a huge global industry which is central to
the economic wealth of every nation [39].
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