Scientific publications are undoubtedly the main means of disseminating and preserving scientific knowledge. Methods of scientific publishing—from handwritten notes circulated in scientific circles before the invention of the printing press to extensive digital archives now available to billions of people—reflect profound societal changes that have taken place since. The sharing of ideas, discoveries, and methodologies through scientific journals began in the 17th century in England, France, and Germany. Philosophical Transactions and Le Journal des Sçavans, both founded in 1665, were soon followed by the German journals Miscelanea Curiosa (1670) and Acta Eruditorum (1682). Behind them all were important figures of intellectual history—from Heinrich (Henry) Oldenburg, through Denis de Sallo and Otto Mencke, to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. These journals became a model for recording, verifying, disseminating, and archiving scientific knowledge. Peer review was introduced and systematically used by The Edinburgh Medical Journal from 1773 onwards and was gradually adopted by other, initially, mainly medical journals. However, a peer-review-like practice was in place in a number of old-vintage journals (e. g. , Proceedings of the Royal Society of London) where the published papers were “communicated” (i. e. , endorsed) by a distinguished academic. From the beginning of the 19th century, the number of scientific journals increased from tens or hundreds to hundreds of thousands by the end of the 20th century. The growth was approximately exponential (several percent per year), with rates varying by field and region. At the beginning of the 20th century, a model for the structure of scientific articles, called IMRaD (introduction, methods, results, and discussion), emerged and became a global standard after World War II. In 1971, the digitization “Project Gutenberg” was proposed, leading to the creation of the first free online digital library (https: //www. gutenberg. org/). Digital books—as well as journals—then proliferated rapidly with the rise of the World Wide Web in the late 20th century. Digital scientific communication soon surpassed traditional print in many ways, including rapid dissemination, easy search and storage, quick corrections and updates, as well as collaborative and interactive distribution of scientific articles. With widespread and growing access to digital content, the model of scientific publishing has shifted from exclusively print to print-on-demand, exclusively digital, or both print and digital. With the development and deployment of digital literature search engines such as Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science, citations and other metrics have become easily accessible and transparent. Scientific publishing, once a noncommercial activity funded primarily by scientists themselves or their societies, has dramatically changed since World War II into a highly lucrative industry. In 2024, this industry had a global turnover of over 12 billion and a profit margin of nearly 40%. Scientific journals have become the main product of this industry, which is now dominated by the “Big Five”: Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Sage, and Taylor American Institute of Physics, AIP; American Physical Society, APS; etc. ). In 2015, the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) found that, under the subscription system, libraries worldwide paid approximately €7. 6 billion for 2 million research and review articles published annually, or €3800 per article. Subscriptions were typically increased by 3%–4% per year. For large publishers, these fees were bundled (in so-called big deals) as part of negotiations with libraries about multiple journals published by the same publisher. In the United States and elsewhere, part of these subscription costs was covered by indirect costs, also known as “facilities and administration” (F for example, under the DEAL consortium agreement with Wiley, the fee has fallen to €2750 under the OA model. Figure 1 compares the OA article share and the revenue share, attesting to the cost-effectiveness of OA publishing. Moreover, the figure illustrates that the subscription model imposes a greater financial burden on the research community than OA publishing. Despite all the evidence, the myth that OA has increased the cost of scientific publishing prevails—in some communities more than in others. In some disciplines, publishing on preprint servers gains more and more attention which complicates discussions at the universities (https: //www. journalmetrics. org/blog/preprint-servers-guide? utmₛource=chatgpt. com). A general deduction in advance for OA costs across all faculties would be a general model, some universities OA costs to individual researchers–authors. This to discussions in the scientific system at which that publishing, in should not be a business with a profit The transition phase academic institutions with an to make the of a library institutions must now create an information to cover all publishing costs by their a large information at first to be a burden for the of academic institutions. In the a information to be a that academic institutions can and will use to the In Germany, the German Research has provided open access publication funding to the transition to OA, including to and publication at universities and other research institutions. In to the costs of the OA business model and its fiscal transparency, the to published articles are not to the publishers (as was the case with the subscription business but with the author a where stands for with the which is the for the and reach of scientific A with transformative agreements is that they have not been across the scientific community. This a and institutions, and in the of the of scientific knowledge. The annual by the on APCs and is under which includes the of the MPDL who contracts for all Max Planck Institutes with publishers. In addition, the individual approximately million per this amount essentially the of one per a additional budget. This total amount of million should be compared to the total annual of approximately This means that for the which is a the share of the entire on publication and subscription costs is only more than from this the the publication costs of all its of the journal in which they The of the transition from the subscription to the OA business model at the is illustrated in Figure Currently, approximately of all publications authors are with are published open access, and all APC costs are covered by this budget. also has a with Springer for which includes of APCs of for publications in these many articles in these journals. The has not OA is that some authors out of OA publishing, because they are not and they will have to pay APCs from their own research that the publishing fees would have been covered It should be that there are very journals that are from this namely, the American for the of Science that Science, because it not OA publishing, and the Journal of the Society of because its fees are We note that the MPDL not consider the APCs of journals to be given the and importance of these journals. all have OA publishing. in these on conference with an annual APC payments are not allowed or there is a on their total annual costs. open science and OA as means of the costs of publishing scientific on publishing through agreements between institutions or their and publishers amount to savings for who a large part of the for scientific research. the of the transition to open science and OA publishing action by the research community and the publishers. However, even in the case of Germany, where the is nationwide by the German Science and and the DEAL consortium it is up to individual institutions and their to the principles of open science and to see to it that the transition to OA publishing is taken the OA business model, it is in to increase both APCs and the number of articles APCs under is primarily the of research it is up to the of individual journals to that only articles are for However, should also that the APCs charged by their journals are transparent. It that the of journals on the principles of open science be of their publishers and on the of to publishers. Only then can open science journals the scientific community with the it We note that open science in an additional challenges that have to be with we note that there has been a of online journals that to be scientific and OA, but in are It is not to them from the as it is not to from the Their should not for OA or to its advantages and social or journals have to do with OA. the of the which online publishing is not by the and of all that the World Wide Web
Bearer et al. (Mon,) studied this question.