The privatization of Open Access

Abstract

Know this: an average public university loses 25% of its scientific output and retains 75% of the ownership (if we can equate open access with a kind of retention). And of that 75% which is open, 93% is through a paid open access model. Therefore, out of 100 articles, the university loses 25 and keeps 75; however, for those 75 articles to remain its own, it has had to pay for 68 of them (because 93% of open access operates through a commercial open access model). This means that open access has been privatized. And that transformative agreements have been the model that has achieved this, shifting the fee from reading to publishing. It is simply a scam. Where we think there is 75% open, we actually have 25% donated and around 70% recovered through a kind of ransom payment. This means that only about 5% of a public university’s output truly belongs to it without having to pay more than what it invested in the production process.