The recording of OASPA’s online seminar held on 21 January 2025 What do we mean by quality in OA publishing?, is now available.

Efforts to establish sets of criteria that OA publishers need to meet in order to ensure equitable, transparent, and high-quality OA publishing were presented. It was also discussed how libraries and other scholarly communication actors could contribute to the evidence-based notion of quality in scholarly publishing.

In the context of open access (OA) publishing, the ISSN plays a crucial role in improving discoverability and organization of OA publications. By including persistent identifiers like ISSN in metadata, libraries can link resources and reduce confusion for users. The report emphasizes that metadata, including identifiers, improve content discovery, support interoperability, and streamline library workflows. Accurate and thorough metadata enable effective searching and evaluation, ensuring that OA publications are easily found and used. Publishers are encouraged to adopt and share detailed metadata, including ISSNs, to facilitate easier access and integration into library systems.

In 2023, OASPA members saw a 4% growth in open access publications, a significant slowdown compared to previous years. Fully OA journals, which accounted for 75% of articles, experienced a decline, while hybrid OA journals grew by 22%. CC BY licenses remain dominant, comprising 82% of fully OA and 60% of hybrid OA articles. The OA publishing market is highly consolidated, with the top five publishers accounting for 70% of total output. MDPI, Elsevier, and Springer Nature remain the largest contributors to OA publishing.

Open Access Articles Published by OASPA Members; Sources: OASPA publisher survey, OpenAlex, Delta Think analysis.

This study examined trends in the publication of open access (OA) and non-OA journals and articles from 2011 to 2021 using SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) data. Results revealed that while the number of OA journals grew significantly, their share of total publications remained lower than non-OA journals. The number of non-OA publishers slightly decreased, while OA publishers increased rapidly. OA journal article production rose across all publisher sizes, with top publishers seeing the largest growth. Notably, MDPI emerged as a global leader in OA journal article publishing.

As an adopter of the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure and a supporter of the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information, DOAJ is committed to making its metadata openly available for the community’s use. DOAJ’s metadata is reused across library systems, discovery services, search engines and research tools that help identify quality open-access journals.

In 2024, DOAJ has received sustaining support from Digital Science, EBSCO, NERAC, OA.Works. OCLC, OurResearch, SciFree, Sirsi Dynix and others. Their support contributes directly to DOAJ’s work in evaluating journals and curating metadata.

Open infrastructure is crucial in research and scholarship, but navigating this complex landscape can be challenging. Infra Finder is an evaluation tool that provides verified information on over 90 open infrastructures, covering 30 solution categories. It allows users to make informed decisions based on reliable information about openness, community governance, interoperability, and hosting options. The tool also includes new open infrastructure categories, such as data and computational infrastructure, digital preservation and archival infrastructure, and open access or subscription management tools. The Keepers Registry, a service implemented by ISSN International Centre, is among the open infrastructures.

This report details the diverse mix of revenue streams in OA Journal publishing in 2024 and beyond. It also examines the research integrity crisis confronting the sector, the decrease in the number of titles being published, and how publishers and policy makers are responding.

This report provides an overview and financial outlook for the OA journal publishing market, including the performance of leading competitors’ through 2024 and market projections through 2028. To produce this data, the analyst used the information from global OA journal sales, leading publishers, and revenue projections through 2028. To develop a financial outlook for open access journal publishing, the analyst consulted primary and secondary research, competitor interviews, industry expert consultations, and financial data analysis.

EDP Sciences and SMAI have released their 2024 transparency report, highlighting the fourth consecutive year of open access publication for mathematics journals under the Subscribe to Open model. The report highlights achievements such as sustained open access, moderate subscription price increases, stable article output, financial sustainability, and the impact of national agreements, partnerships, and additional funding.

EIFL’s landscape study explores open access (OA) journals in Africa that don’t charge fees (Diamond OA), based on survey data from 199 journals, 21 platforms, and 25 country reports. It examines funding, sustainability, institutional support, incentives, and collaboration among these journals. The study is part of the three-year ‘Collaboration for sustainable open access publishing in Africa’ project (Nov 2023 – Oct 2026), led by EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online), and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network) with Wellcome’s support.

See the online version of the report.