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 the aforementioned learned societies
over the previous 3-year window (2015-2017), the average number of
citations per paper was substantially higher for subscription
journals when compared to OA journals [6].
Alone, these two facts help to explain why in 2018 still 74% of the
chemistry papers were published in subscription journals [5].
Chemistry is the most concentrated segment of the scientific publishing
industry, with only five publishers publishing more than 70% of
chemistry studies in 2013 [24]. More recently, with 207 journals
from 20 publishers, chemistry was found to be the third (after
multidisciplinary and space science) scientific discipline in terms of
market concentration measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index
[21].
Another highly reputed learned society, the American Physical Society,
ranks third amid the largest 20 publishers classified by number of
average citations received to articles published in 2016, 2017 and 2018
displayed in Table 5. In this case, however, the number of citations of
articles published in OA journals is almost twice higher than
that in non-OA journals [6]. 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.
4 Openly accessible, impactful science
“If you include journal impact factors in the list of publications in
your curriculum”, wrote Curry citing the Seglen’s 1992 work [25]
showing the highly skewed pattern of citation distribution for which
only a few papers in a journal account for most of the journal’s total
citations, “you are statistically illiterate” [26].
Now, given the fact that universities and research bodies continue to
use the journal impact factor 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, in a few months some 34,000 biologists signed the online
petition initiative by Varmus, Brown, and Eisen calling by late 2000 all
scientists 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).
Yet, as noted by Harnad in 2005 [29], over 90% of journals gave
author the permission to self-archive their papers on personal websites
or in institutional repositories. Underlining the inconsistency, Harnad
continued:
«Now SUPPOSE that – in addition to performing the keystrokes required
to sign the 2001 PLOS open letter (pledging to boycott journals
unless they become OA journals), each of the 34,000 PLOS signatories had also performed (or deputized a librarian, secretary or
student to perform for them) the few further keystrokes it would have
required to make just one of their own year-2001 articles OA by
self-archiving it, free for all, on the web.
«THEN the number of OA articles (34,000) resulting from just that
minimal act would already have doubled (to 60%) the percentage of OA
articles (34%) among the approximately 55,000 Biology articles indexed
by ISI in 2001; it would also have exceeded the total number of articles
published by both BioMed Central and PLOS journals from 2001 to
the present (c. 20,000) [29]»
The very same inconsistency was noted in 2014 for scholars of all
disciplines upon analyzing 1,066,079 articles published between 1999 and
2011 (social sciences 91,729 articles, life sciences 202,833 articles,
health sciences 282,096 articles, and physical sciences 489,421
articles), 80.4% of which could be self-archived after one year of
publication either on personal webpages (78.1 % of articles) or in
institutional repositories (79.9%), whereas around 12% of total annual
articles are actually self-archived [30].
“The results” wrote Laakso concluding the study, “highlight the
substantial unused potential for green OA” [30]. This fact provides
evidence that today’s scholars in large part are unaware of the
possibilities offered by today’s scholarly communication and further
substantiates my viewpoint for which the full transition to open science
requires new education of today’s doctoral students and early career
researchers on scholarly communication in the digital era [8].
5 Outlook and Conclusions
OA academic publishing is thriving. In 2019, MDPI, an OA
multidisciplinary publisher jointly established by a former research
chemist in 1996, became the 5th world’s largest
academic publisher with over 106,000 articles published in one year only
[31]. Several MDPI journals are devoted to chemistry, nanotechnology
and materials science. The APCs across the aforementioned journals are
in the order of CHF 1,600. 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.
Given the APC levels shown in Table 4 it may not be surprising to learn
that even in the USA, a wealthy nation leading for over a century the
global scientific production, OA publishing in journals levying an APC
is used in a disproportionately larger fraction from 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
http://preprint.chemweb.com [
33],
research chemists were the first after physicists, mathematicians and
computer scientists to show real interest in open science. Today, the
fact that chemistry scholars understand and value open science is shown
for example by PubChem, an online repository for information on chemical
substances and their biological activities, that 11 years after its
inception in 2004 already hosted at
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov more than 157 million chemical
substance descriptions [
34].
Put simply, most research chemists never received education on today’s
scholarly communication and on open science. The result is that still in
the early 2020s, the vast majority of them does not self-archive
research papers in institutional and personal websites, thereby losing
the opportunities for enhanced use (and citation) of their own
work.
Whether new chemical methods, materials, ideas or models, the main
objective of any chemistry scholar is to see her/his findings used by the global chemistry community which, unique amid all
scientific disciplines, includes researchers working for a huge global
industry comprising chemical (and pharmaceutical) companies which is
central to the wealth of any country [35].
Likewise to any other scholar in the basic sciences, chemistry scholars
are also interested in citations which still place a central role in
review, promotion and tenure procedures used by their employers. By
quickly fulfilling the “unused potential for green OA” [30],
chemistry scholars should make their papers openly accessible through
self-archiving on institutional or personal websites, and publish in
preprint form any new works. Beyond recording rapid increase in the
number of citations, the same scholars will enjoy the benefits of open
science in terms of enhanced collaboration, job and funding
opportunities [36,37].
In other words, rather than paying the APCs of “gold” OA journals,
chemistry scholars should take advantage of the new tools enabled by the
internet and by progress in scholarly communication, freely publishing
their own work first as preprint and then in any journal not levying any
APC, namely “platinum” OA journals or even in “paywalled” journals.
After the embargo period (often 12 months, but for certain journals 24
months), the published article will be self-archived either in
institutional or personal websites.
In promotion and tenure processes, chemistry scholars are chiefly
evaluated based on research, with evaluation often failing to reward
teaching and service devaluing faculty work in these areas as it happens
in most basic sciences [38]. Hence, by making their work openly
accessible, they will enable improvement in all citation-based metrics
still narrowly used to evaluate them, freeing time for teaching, sharing
of knowledge with the public, writing books, grant proposals, and
preparing teaching materials to foster student creativity in the digital
age [39].
Inexorably, then, thanks to widespread uptake of OA publishing, research
chemists will start to value the benefits of open scholarship including
sharing of educational resources [40], thereby dramatically
improving outcomes in all three main fields of academic activity:
research, education an service to society.