While I was running this morning I was thinking about Danny’s post on OA terminology, and it brought to mind this recent piece of analysis in Clarke & Esposito’s always essential _The Brief_ newsletter:

 

https://www.ce-strategy.com/the-brief/retrenchment/

 

One of the many intriguing data points brought up in this issue was this one: “Fully OA journal output declined 1.7% from 2022 to 2023, whereas hybrid OA grew by 28%.” Not very long ago, I think most of us would have considered hybrid OA publishing to be on the way out, under pressure from European government funders (https://tinyurl.com/4sxushre) and general community opprobrium (https://tinyurl.com/2p9wmm82). This despite the fact that there’s a good argument (I think) to be made that hybrid OA represents a pretty good compromise in terms of equity: readers get a lot of (though not all) content for free, while authors who can’t afford to pay an APC have a free publishing option.

 

Of course, this only seems like a good compromise if one believes that compromise is acceptable, and that it’s okay for some content not to be OA – not exactly an uncontroversial position.

 

By the way, I strongly recommend _The Brief_ to anyone who wants a handy monthly overview of the state of things in the scholarly communication marketplace. It’s free.

 

 

 

 

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