Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Affordability Crisis: APCs and the New Paywall
- The Equity and Global South Disadvantage
- The Rise of Predatory Publishing and Quality Concerns
- Hybrid Journals and the ‘Double-Dipping’ Scandal
- The Monopolization of Open Access and Lack of Innovation
- Conclusion
Introduction
The promise of open access was a thrilling, almost utopian vision for scholarly publishing: immediate, free access to research for everyone, everywhere. It was supposed to tear down the paywalls that had turned publicly funded knowledge into a commodity accessible only to well-endowed institutions.
Among the various open access models that emerged, Gold Open Access quickly became the dominant model. This model, in which the final, peer-reviewed “version of record” is made immediately and permanently available online, often relies on an Article Processing Charge (APC) paid by the author, their institution, or their funder, rather than by the reader. Gold Open Access publishing nearly tripled in volume between 2014 and 2024, now accounting for around 40% of all scholarly articles globally. This makes Gold Open Access by far the most popular mode of open access publishing.
The shift to Gold Open Access was heralded as a necessary market correction, transforming the subscription-based business model that had ballooned library costs for decades. It put publishing costs on the production side, theoretically creating a transparent system where money followed the article, not the reader. However, this seemingly golden solution has, in practice, introduced a fresh set of thorny problems that threaten the very principles of equity and accessibility upon which the movement was founded.
It turns out that simply shifting the payment burden doesn’t eliminate the barriers. Rather, it just changes who gets to jump them. What was meant to democratize knowledge has, in many ways, created a new form of oligopoly and exclusion, one where the glint of gold masks significant cracks in the foundation of the scholarly ecosystem. The true cost of “free-to-read” research is proving to be much higher and more complex than its early champions might have anticipated.
The Affordability Crisis: APCs and the New Paywall
The most immediate and glaring problem with the Gold Open Access model is the expensive APC. For readers, the research is free. For authors, however, the APC is the gatekeeper. These fees, which can range from a few hundred dollars to upwards of $10,000 for high-impact hybrid journals, are prohibitive for a vast majority of the global research community.
The average APC for fully open access journals is lower, but it still sits well beyond the reach of unfunded researchers, early-career academics, and scholars from institutions with limited budgets, particularly those in the Global South. The irony is painfully obvious: the system designed to increase access to reading has erected a formidable new barrier to publishing.
This financial barrier fundamentally contradicts the original spirit of the open access movement, which aimed to make both reading and publishing equitable. Researchers without a large grant or an institution with a generous “transformative agreement” with major publishers are essentially locked out of publishing in many of the most prestigious, high-impact Gold Open Access venues.
It’s a vicious cycle. Researchers need to publish in high-impact journals to secure funding and career progression, but those journals often charge the highest APCs, which in turn require significant funding. This system entrenches the Matthew effect, where established, well-funded academics get more visibility and more citations, and subsequently more funding, while those from less privileged backgrounds struggle to get their work noticed. It’s a clear case of the rich getting richer in terms of academic reputation and visibility.
The Equity and Global South Disadvantage
The APC model has a distinctly colonial flavor, reinforcing the historical dominance of the Global North in scholarly communication. By setting APCs based on the market dynamics of wealthy Western institutions, Gold Open Access effectively creates a two-tiered system. Researchers in high-income countries, especially those in Europe and North America, are often covered by institutional funds or “Publish and Read” agreements, also known as Transformative Agreements (TAs). These TAs, which are essentially large-scale deals where institutions pay a publisher a single fee to both subscribe to their paywalled content and cover the APCs for their affiliated authors, have become a major driver of the transition to Gold Open Access.
The rest of the world, however, is left to pay out of pocket or rely on limited waiver programs. While some publishers offer waivers or discounts for authors from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), these programs are often non-transparent, cumbersome, and inconsistent. They are frequently managed by institutional or funder policies, adding administrative burden. Crucially, the reliance on waivers frames participation from the Global South as an act of charity rather than an inherent right to participate in global scholarship.
Furthermore, the most prestigious journals, often hybrid journals, may not always offer the most comprehensive waiver programs. This means researchers from LMICs are often pushed toward less visible, fully open access journals or forced to publish in local, less internationally recognized venues, thereby exacerbating the very problem of knowledge hegemony that open access was supposed to solve. Equity in Open Access, a concept that extends beyond mere reading access to include the right to publish and participate fully, remains a distant goal under the prevailing Gold Open Access model.
The Rise of Predatory Publishing and Quality Concerns
The shift from a subscription-based revenue model to an author-pays model introduced a perverse incentive into the publishing ecosystem. When a journal’s revenue depends on the quantity of articles published rather than the quality of its readership, the focus can easily shift from rigorous peer review to maximizing output. This flawed financial logic is the breeding ground for predatory publishing.
Predatory journals are not just low-quality. They are deceptive entities whose sole purpose is to extract an APC from the author without providing legitimate editorial, peer review, or publishing services. They mimic the names and websites of legitimate journals, often promise impossibly fast publication times, and charge fees with minimal or nonexistent quality control.
The sheer volume of these journals has tarnished the reputation of Gold Open Access as a whole, associating the entire model with questionable practices. Even though many legitimate, high-quality, fully open access journals exist, the shadow cast by the thousands of predatory operations forces many academics, particularly those new to the open access landscape, to approach all APC-based journals with skepticism. This is a devastating blow to the trust and credibility that scholarly communication must uphold.
This quality concern isn’t limited to outright predatory actors either. The pressure to generate revenue can, and sometimes does, subtly influence the editorial decisions even of legitimate, commercial Gold Open Access publishers. Journals with extremely high publication volumes and fast turnaround times have occasionally faced scrutiny over the rigor of their peer-review processes.
While correlation doesn’t equal causation, the business imperative to constantly feed the APC machine is a dark cloud over the commitment to scholarly integrity. The financial model, in essence, creates a potential conflict of interest between the journal’s mission to publish high-quality science and its commercial need to accept as many paying articles as possible.
Hybrid Journals and the ‘Double-Dipping’ Scandal
If Gold Open Access is the villain in this story, then Hybrid Open Access is its sniveling, opportunistic sidekick. Hybrid journals are subscription-based journals that offer authors the option to pay an APC to make their individual article open access. This model allows established, often high-impact subscription journals to experiment with OA while maintaining their primary, highly lucrative subscription revenue stream.
The problem, which critics quickly dubbed “double-dipping,” is that the publisher receives payment from the library via the subscription fee and from the author via the APC for the same journal. The library is, in effect, paying twice for the same content. This practice led to massive pushback from academic libraries and consortia, as it became clear that the hybrid model was often being used to generate windfall profits for major commercial publishers without a corresponding reduction in subscription fees. While Transformative Agreements aim to channel subscription revenue to cover APCs and convert hybrid journals to fully open access, the hybrid journal’s underlying financial structure remains a constant temptation for publishers to maximize revenue through both channels.
The hybrid option also complicates funding, adding another layer of confusion and administrative overhead. Should an author in a hybrid journal pay the APC to ensure maximum readership, even if their institution already paid for the subscription? Is the publisher truly giving a fair price, or is the APC inflated to capture grant money? This lack of transparency in pricing and the clear evidence of double-dipping have made the hybrid model one of the most contentious areas in academic publishing, and it has rightfully been criticized for prioritizing profit over the principles of open scholarship. It’s a publishing model that epitomizes how commercial interests can co-opt and dilute an idealistic movement.
The Monopolization of Open Access and Lack of Innovation
The open access revolution was supposed to be a disruptive force, creating a decentralized, competitive, and innovative publishing landscape. Instead, the Gold Open Access model, particularly due to the massive flow of APC-based funding, has actually reinforced the market dominance of the same few major commercial publishers that previously monopolized the subscription market. Companies like Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley have leveraged their immense back-catalogs, strong brands, and existing infrastructure to become the biggest players in the Gold Open Access space.
These large publishers are now the primary beneficiaries of the huge investments made by funding agencies and institutions via Transformative Agreements. As of 2024, the open access publishing market was estimated at around $2.1 billion annually and is projected to grow to over $3.2 billion by 2028. The bulk of this money is concentrated in the hands of a few publishing giants. This concentration of power is a significant issue because it allows these few actors to set high APC prices, dictate the terms of TAs, and stifles true innovation. When a handful of companies control a significant majority of the publishing infrastructure and the flow of research funds, genuine competition becomes nearly impossible.
Furthermore, this corporate dominance distracts from and financially overshadows truly community-driven, non-APC models such as Diamond Open Access (journals with no fees for authors or readers, typically funded by institutions or societies). Diamond Open Access, while far more equitable, struggles for funding and visibility because the bulk of the money earmarked for open access is now locked into APC-driven agreements with the biggest players. Instead of a vibrant ecosystem of diverse, sustainable publishing models, we’re seeing an oligopoly solidify its control, ensuring that the primary innovation is not in making publishing better or fairer, but in finding more efficient ways to collect a constantly rising APC.
Conclusion
The Gold Open Access model, with its reliance on Article Processing Charges (APCs), represents a profoundly mixed blessing for the world of scholarly publishing. It has achieved the crucial goal of tearing down the paywalls for readers, accelerating the global dissemination of knowledge, and dramatically increasing the volume of immediately accessible research. This achievement is undeniable and valuable. However, in the process of achieving open reading, it has inadvertently introduced severe new constraints on open publishing. The high and constantly rising cost of APCs has created a new financial barrier, effectively swapping a reader paywall for an author paywall.
This new system exacerbates global inequities, favoring well-funded researchers in the Global North and sidelining colleagues from less resource-rich environments. The financial incentives inherent in the APC model have simultaneously fueled the rise of predatory publishing, tarnishing the integrity of the entire open access movement, and reinforced the market dominance of a few commercial giants, undermining the potential for truly disruptive innovation.
Ultimately, Gold Open Access has demonstrated that accessibility is not simply a matter of removing one single barrier. It requires a deep, systemic reform of how scholarly work is valued and funded. The path forward must prioritize transparent, equitable, and community-owned publishing infrastructure, models like Diamond Open Access, and institutional/funder policies that truly support all researchers, not just those with access to the deepest pockets. The glitter of gold may be attractive, but a durable, equitable system requires a more solid, less commercially driven foundation.