by Corinne Gangloff
July 19, 2024
Submissions Decline as Fraudulent Papers Increase
Rockville MD, July 19, 2024 – Open Access (OA) Journal publishing, which has been on a growth track over the last several years now faces major headwinds. Although the total size of the market has grown from $1.9 billion in 2023, to $2.1 billion in 2024, actual OA output has slowed across geographies, including from China. And for the first time since its founding in 2003, the number of articles added to the Directory of Open Access Journals was fewer than the prior year. A total of 1.117 million articles were added to the database in 2023, a 3% decline from 1.147 million articles in 2022.
At the same time, the OA arena has faced an unprecedented number of challenges related to the integrity and truthfulness of articles submitted for publication.
These and other details surrounding the latest trends impacting open access journals and publishers were just released in Simba Information’s July 2024 report, Open Access Journal Publishing 2024-2028.
By the summer of 2024, while OA remains a mainstream form of publishing, it has been reeling from the revelation that thousands of fraudulent open access papers were discovered, which then had to be retracted by their publishers.
Commenting on this development, Robert Berkman, managing editor of Simba, noted, “Not only did Wiley have to retract thousands of papers published by its Hindawi publishing brand, but other major OA publishers such as Frontiers and MDPI had to do the same.” Berkman added that “to counter this trend, some publishers are now implementing Artificial Intelligence to check for certain signals in submitted papers that indicate which are outliers.” This AI check, he added “could trigger further review of those articles to check for any integrity issues.”
The other approach the sector is taking to deal with this integrity crisis is by putting a new emphasis on the use of preprints. Both Europe, via its “cOAoalition S” approach to open access, and the US with a plan that papers be deposited in open repositories beginning in 2026, represent these new strategies to get hold and confront the problem.
In addition to analyzing growth and integrity issues, Simba’s Open Access Journal Publishing 2024-2028 analyzes larger trends in the market including an update on transformative agreements; the range of competing OA pay and revenue models, the role and impact of public funding agencies, market size and share of the major publishers across geographies and revenue; recent mergers and acquisitions and forecasts through 2028. A major section of the report provides detailed profiles, performance and strategies of leading OA journal publishers.
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