Open access publishing in chemistry: a practical perspective informing new education

Abstract

In the late 1990s chemists were among the early adopters of open access (OA) publishing. As also happened with preprints, the early successful adoption of OA publishing by chemists subsequently slowed down. In 2016 chemistry was found to be the discipline with the lowest proportion of OA articles in articles published between 2009 and 2015. To benefit from open science in terms of enhanced citations, collaboration, job and funding opportunities, chemistry scholars need updated information (and education) of practical relevance about open science. Suggesting avenues for quick uptake of OA publishing from chemists in both developed and developing countries, this article offers a critical perspective on academic publishing in the chemical sciences that will be useful to inform that education.

Preprints in Chemistry: a Research Team's Journey**

“…Most of our 68 preprints posted in nearly six years between late 2016 and early 2022 were published in Preprints (42), followed by bioRxiv (7), ChemRxiv (7), Authorea (5), and arXiv (3). As was the case for Authorea and bioRxiv, we also had a rewarding experience with other preprint platforms such as Research Square (in which we published 3 preprints) and SSRN (1), where preprints are published in computer-readable HTML format and not only as non-actionable PDF files ("a digital photograph of a piece of paper" [58] ).…”

“…Preprinting their research, early career researchers benefit inter alia from immediate publication of research outcomes in OA form, establish priority on research findings, and enhance chances for international collaborations. [6] Senior researchers, even in disciplines like chemistry whose research community has been reluctant to adopt preprints and OA publishing, [7] benefit from enhanced visibility and citations of preprinted research. Preprints indeed are regularly cited, [8] and vastly increase the visibility and the number of citations of the research articles subsequently published in comparison to research articles published in the same journal but not preprinted.…”

Preprints in chemistry: a research team’s journey

“…We published most of our 68 preprints at Preprints (42), followed by bioRxiv (9), ChemRxiv (7), Authorea (5) and arXiv (3). Like in the case of Authorea and bioRxiv, we had a rewarding experience also with other preprint platforms such as Research Square and SSRN where preprints are published in computer-readable HTML format and not only as non-actionable PDF files ("a digital photograph of a piece of paper" [35]).…”

“…Senior researchers, even in disciplines like chemistry whose research community has been reluctant to adopt preprints and OA publishing [7], benefit from enhanced visibility and citations of preprinted research. Preprints indeed are regularly cited [8], and vastly increase the visibility and the number of citations of the research articles subsequently published in comparison to research articles published in the same journal but not preprinted [9].…”

Reaping the benefits of open science in scholarly communication

“…The presentations given at these conferences are usually made openly accessible on preprint platforms, whereas the video recordings are published on the web. 15 Regardless of these and related efforts to disseminate the ideas and the practice of open science, most world's scholars in the early 2020s do not yet publish their works in preprint form and do not self-archive their research articles, with entire research fields, like the basic science of chemistry, 16 still dominated by the practice to publish research papers in paywalled journals.…”