Conference presentation Haustein, S., Smith, E., Mongeon, P., Shu, F., & Larivière, V. (2016). Access to global health research. Prevalence and cost of gold and hybrid open access. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (p. 410–418). Valencia, Spain.

1. Access to
global health research
Prevalence and cost of open access
Stefanie Haustein, Elise Smith, Philippe Mongeon, Fei Shu &
Vincent Larivière
@stefhaustein
@stefhaustein

2. Background: Open Access
• Different forms of OA
• Gold OA
• Delayed OA
• OA uptake
• 46.9% of 2011-2013 papers (Archambault et al., 2014)
• 12.1% gold and hybrid
• 5.9% green in certain repositories, 30.9% other green
• OA citation advantage (Archambault et al., 2014)
• - 39% citations for gold and hybrid OA
• +53% citations for green in certain repositories
• +36% citations for other green
• Hybrid OA
• Green OA
Archambault, É., Amyot, D., Deschamps, P., Nicol, A., Provencher, F., Rebout, L., & Roberge, G. (2014). Proportion of Open Access Papers
Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals at the European and World Levels 1996-2013. (RTD-B6-PP-2011-2: Study to develop a set of indicators
to measure open access). European Commission.

3. Background: Global Health
• Global health research (GHR) defined as:
• ”an area for study, research, and practice that places a
priority on improving health and achieving equity in health
for all people worldwide" (Koplan et al., 2009, p. 1995)
• “a multi- and interdisciplinary field concerned with
improving health and achieving equity in health for all
people.” (MeSH, 2015)
• Knowledge sharing is central in GHR
• Access to publications essential for researchers and
practitioners in LMICs
Koplan, J.P., Bond, T.C., Merson, M.H., Reddy, K.S., Rodriguez, M.H., Sewankambo, N.K., et al. (2009): Towards a common
definition of global health. The Lancet, 373(9679),1993–5.
MeSH (2015): Global Health. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68014943

4. Research questions
• What types of publication practices are prevailing in
GHR?
• To what extent do journals allow gold, hybrid or green OA?
• To what extent do authors make use of various routes of
OA?
• What are the costs of gold and hybrid OA in GHR?
• What are the average prices of gold and hybrid APCs?
• Which publishers benefit most from gold and hybrid APCs?
• What is the impact of various access categories?
• Which papers have the highest citation impact?
• Which papers are cited most by LMICs?

5. Methods
• PubMed search for MeSH term “Global Health”
2010-2014: 4,333 documents
• Research articles only:
• 3,366 documents
• 909 journals
• Determining publishers (Larivière et al., 2015)
• Determining journal access status and APCs
• Manual check of all journals and publishers
• Sherpa RoMEO status of journal
Larivière, V., Haustein, S., & Mongeon, P. (2015). The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. PLOS ONE, 10(6),
e0127502. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

6. Methods
Access categories at the journal level
• Gold OA journal (non-APC)
• Gold OA journal (APC)
• Delayed OA journal
• Hybrid journal
• Subscription only journal
• Unknown

7. Methods
Access categories at the paper level
• Gold OA article (non-APC)
• Gold OA article (APC)
• Delayed OA article
• Hybrid article
• Toll access article
• Green OA article
• Other free access
• Paper status unknown

8. Methods
• Citation analysis
• NSF field and year normalized (not presented)
• GHR and year normalized
• Citing countries
• Classification according to World Bank Atlas method
• Low income
• Lower middle income
• Upper middle income
• High income
• Normalization as a share of citing countries per paper
https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/378832-what-is-the-world-bank-atlas-method

9. Results
Prevalence

10. Results
Prevalence

11. Results
Policy compliance of green OA
• 700 subscription and hybrid journals
84% formally support green OA
7% do not formally support green OA
9% not graded by SHERPA RoMEO
• 2,061 papers in 638 RoMEO graded journals
• 1,872 papers could have been green OA
• 189 papers cannot be self-archived

12. Results
Cost
$1,713,215 for 627 papers
APCs paid:
$2,732 per paper
$2,452 gold
$3,240 hybrid
APCs offered:
$1,864 per gold journal
$2,978 per hybrid journal
For-profit publishers:
23% Elsevier
18% Springer Nature
10% Wiley-Blackwell

13. Results
Citation impact

14. Results
Citing countries
Average distribution of citing countries per paper

15. Conclusions
• Sharing of knowledge is inherent to and essential in GHR
• 42.0% of articles hidden behind a pay-wall
• Despite a higher impact, only 39.2% of papers that could
be self-archived are green OA; 60.8%% of green OA
potential lost
• Particular high hybrid APCs
• Although hybrid papers are cited more than gold OA,
LMICs are underrepresented among citing countries
• Overwhelming proportion of research funds funneled to
for-profit publishers

16. Stefanie Haustein @stefhaustein
for your attention!
Thank you