KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Delta Think has identified a “small” but “significant” drop in the percentage of open access articles published in 2023, following an 8-year period of sustained growth.
• Delta Think suggest this loss in open access market share could reflect authors moving away from fully open access publishers, given perceived quality issues in a subset of journals.

Hot on the heels of our recent article on the real-terms cost of article processing charges, we look at another report from Delta Think: open access (OA) market share has dropped for the first time since 2016.

According to preliminary results from Delta Think’s 2024 publisher survey, the volume of publications has been rising since 2016, with high OA growth rates dominating the market up to 2023. Following a “post-COVID spike”, growth has now slowed back down to long-term trends, with OA losing market share.  

2023 saw a “small” but “significant” loss in OA market share

Despite previously predicting that OA articles would make up over half the monetisable scholarly output by 2023, Delta Think found that between 2022 and 2023:

• total article output grew by 3.4%
• OA article output grew by 2.1%
• OA’s output share fell from 49% to 48%.

The decrease is a small but notable shift from the long-term trend of incremental gains in OA market share each year. For the first time, OA output is not growing as quickly as total scholarly output, representing “a reversal of long-term observations”.

For the first time, OA output is not growing as quickly as total scholarly output.

Why has OA lost market share?

Delta Think suggest that alongside a post-COVID return to long-term trends, underlying challenges experienced by OA publishers could be to blame. Authors’ concerns about quality due to paper mills, the rise of special editions, and removal of impact factors may have contributed to a shift away from fully OA publishers, despite these issues affecting only a minority of journals. Uncertainty around funder OA mandates may have also played a role.

Will OA bounce back?

Delta Think caution that it is too early to say, but expect OA growth may pick up again in 2024, at slightly lower levels than in recent years. They note that fully OA publishers still represent a fifth of the market’s output, with well-established hybrid publishers continuing to see growth in OA. Given the benefits of OA, we look forward to seeing whether OA uptake bounces back in 2024.

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