For open science, not for profit

International Open Access Week, an annual initiative organized by SPARC in partnership with the Open Access Week Advisory Committee, takes place this year from October 23-29. The theme for 2023, “Community over Commercialization,” aims to encourage candid conversations about which approaches to open scholarship prioritize the best interests of researchers and the public — and which do not.

Canadian Science Publishing (CSP) upholds openness as one of our core values. As a mission-driven, independent, not-for-profit scholarly publisher, our goal is to enhance the reach, rigour, and relevance of science so that people can find, trust, and use it. Open access (OA) is key to realizing this mission. Open access to research removes barriers, increases transparency and trust in research, accelerates knowledge transfer, improves efficiencies, and boosts research impact. CSP believes that trusted scientific knowledge should be accessible to everyone to move towards a sustainable future.

Publishing for a profit

Commercial academic publishing is undeniably lucrative. In 2023, the global scholarly publishing market is expected to reach a value of $28 billion USD (STM Global Brief 2021 – Economics & Market Size.) The majority of scholarly research is published by commercial entities whose business models depend on either subscriptions or author processing charges (APCs), typically funded by public grants offered to researchers. Commercialization in scholarly science publishing has long been a subject of concern and recent developments—like the August 2022 announcement from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) or the Canadian Tri-Agency’s announcement of their updated OA policy—have intensified the debate. These policy changes, which both call for immediate open access at the time of publication, challenge the traditional publishing model but don’t necessarily impact the profits of major publishers. A recent analysis found that the ‘big five’ scholarly publishers generated around $1 billion in revenue from APCs between 2015 and 2018 from OA and hybrid journals (Lucas-Dominguez et al., 2021.)

While major for-profit publishers value quality science and rigorous peer review, their survival depends on delivering profits to their shareholders. To meet profit goals, commercial publishers have consistently increased their subscription fees and APCs, far exceeding inflation rates (ARL Statistical Trends). These practices result in high profit margins, typically ranging from 20-40%. Considering that the scientific, technical, and medical journal industry was valued at $9.5 billion USD annually in 2021, it becomes evident that substantial research funding—around $1-2 billion USD per year—is collected as profit for major publishers (STM Global Brief 2021 – Economics & Market Size). The nature of commercial publishing puts publishers at odds with the researchers who publish with them, as it diverts billions of dollars in funding that could be better invested in advancing scientific frontiers, ultimately making “doing science” less affordable.

A community-centric approach

The public’s trust in science extends beyond trust in the scientific method itself. People trust in science because they trust in scientists and the community they create. Many factors that make science trustworthy are the outcomes of community. Researchers collaborate on projects, bringing together knowledge and experience from across disciplines and perspectives. The peer review process is a collaborative effort to constructively critique scholarly outputs and improve their quality. Reproducibility requires that researchers replicate and validate each other’s experiments. Researchers in the present build on the work of those in the past. We trust in science because we have confidence in the scientific community’s ability to acknowledge one another’s mistakes, establish connections, and collaborate.

It’s therefore crucial for publishers to support this community. CSP does this by partnering with societies and by engaging directly with researchers on our social media channels. We also understand the immense value in collaborating with communities outside academia and proudly support community-engaged research (CER) in conjunction with esteemed non-academic peer review partners.

CSP is a strong advocate of CER, which involves researchers and community partners working together to advance community goals and science. CSP’s CER guidelines were developed in consultation with researchers and community partners and offer guidance to authors on how to responsibly and transparently report involving community members’ participation. Additionally, we introduced optional “Community involvement statements” in CSP papers to allow authors to describe how the community was involved in the research process and how the study benefits the community.

Of course, one of the most important ways we support the global scholarly community is by embracing open scholarship.

Supporting global open scholarship

CSP, alongside many publishers worldwide, is on a journey to become an OA publisher. The OA community is diverse, including researchers, research institutions, libraries, funders, publishers, and many other stakeholders. CSP is an active participant in several of these OA communities. For example, CSP is a member of OASPA, an international organization with a mission to “encourage and enable open access as the predominant model of communication for scholarly outputs.” CSP is also joining the OA Switchboard, a “neutral, independent intermediary” that shares key data between funders, institutions, and publishers, simplifying and streamlining the process of publishing OA in our journals for our authors.

We recognize that the successful transition to a sustainable OA publishing model in Canada and the advancement of open data and other open science initiatives will require the entire open scholarship community to work together. As a member of the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ) and a participant in CALJ’s open access sub-committee, along with hosting CSP’s own Open Science Working group, we are dedicated to fostering discussions and collaborating on initiatives to drive OA and OS forward. One example of this commitment is our partnership with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), which includes world-class academic libraries and universities from across Canada. This partnership enables unlimited open access publishing in five CSP journals for corresponding authors affiliated with CRKN member institutions. This is just one of the many open access partnerships we share with institutions within Canada and internationally.

A note on bibliodiversity

Concerns about bibliodiversity—the diversity of scholarly publishers and academic journals across a range of topics—have emerged from the homogeneity of the scholarly publishing ecosystem, which is dominated by just a handful of for-profit commercial publishers. In 2022, approximately 50% of Canadian research was published by just five commercial, non-Canadian publishers. Canadian authors would have spent an estimated $68.7M CAD on APCs with these five publishers that year alone (Dimensions).

With this year’s International OA Week theme of “Community over Commercialization,” we are proud to be an independent and not-for-profit scholarly publisher whose mission includes building and supporting research communities. CSP publishes across a range of disciplines, including those that are key strengths of Canadian research, such as Arctic science, forestry, Indigenous knowledge, geosciences, climate change, and environmental sustainability. We believe that an ethical, sustainable, and robust future for the scholarly publishing industry will be built through openness and community.

About the authors

Michael Donaldson is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Canadian Science Publishing. Michael is interested in all aspects of open science and taking innovative and experimental approaches to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and equitable open future.

Rebecca Michaels-Walker is the Social Media & Content Marketing Specialist at Canadian Science Publishing. She is a strong advocate for open science and science communication.