New report provides insights into global OA landscape — and with a focus on China

A new report released today provides insights into the complex and evolving global Open Access landscape — and with a particular focus on China. The report is a product of a collaboration between STM Association and the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) focused on the bilateral sharing of ideas and best practices in OA publishing.

“While the move to OA is global, we can’t assume that every country, every geographical region is moving at the same pace or that they are adapting similar policies,” said STM CEO Caroline Sutton. “As scholarly publishing too is global, the insights gathered and shared in this report will aid publishers in making informed decisions as they serve authors across the globe, and specifically in China.”

While the report is in-depth and covers a lot of ground geographically in its review of various country-based OA models, following are a few top-line takeaways:

• China too is transitioning to OA and its publishing organizations are experiencing similar changes and challenges as publishers internationally.

• Like other countries, China is seeing the same acceleration trend toward OA.

• Data on recently published articles show Gold OA emerging as the more popular OA model in China.

• More than 60 percent of authors internationally hold little understanding of the various OA models.

• With the global, rapid transition to OA, which implies accelerated publishing timeframes and growing expectations around immediacy of access, the need to find new ways to ensure integrity is strong.

“Data in this Report show that open access publishing in China has developed rapidly and China has become an important part of the global open access publishing ecosystem. However, China still has great potential in open access publishing, especially for its considerable number of scientific journals in Chinese language,” said CAST. “ Therefore, CAST will actively develop domestic open access policies, standards, and infrastructure, and make effort on the establishment of an open access publishing system suitable for China.”

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT