Open access journal publishing in the business disciplines: A closer look at the low uptake and discipline-specific considerations

Abstract

The Internet has enabled efficient electronic publishing of scholarly journals and Open Access business models. Recent studies have shown that adoption of Open Access journals has been uneven across scholarly disciplines, where the business and economics disciplines in particular seem to lag behind all other fields of research. Through bibliometric analysis of journals indexed in Scopus, we find the share of articles in Open Access journals in business, management, and accounting to be only 6%. We further studied the Open Access availability of articles published during 2014–2019 in journals included in the Financial Times 50 journal list (19,969 articles in total). None of the journals are full Open Access, but 8% of the articles are individually open and for a further 35% earlier manuscript versions are available openly on the web. The results suggest that the low adoption rate of Open Access journals in the business fields is a side-effect of evaluation practices emphasizing publishing in journals included, in particular, ranking lists, creating disincentives for business model innovation, and barriers for new entrants among journals. Currently, most business school research has to be made Open Access through other ways than through full Open Access journals, and libraries play an important role in facilitating this in a sustainable way.

Choices of immediate open access and the relationship to journal ranking and publish-and-read deals

“…Against the backdrop of an increase in both hybrid and gold access articles, there was a consistently lower propensity for researchers to choose gold open access journals on a high level compared to the normal level. This finding should not be confused with the perceived general less prestigious role of gold open access journals in journal hierarchies previously reported in the literature (e.g., Laakso and Björk, 2021 ), but is an effect linked to the lack of gold open access journals on the high level. This finding is also consistent with previous studies of researchers' attitudes towards open access and journal ranks (e.g., Togia and Korobili, 2014 ).…”

“…The larger uptake of gold open access may at first glance seem at odds with the idea that legacy journals generally are more prestigious than gold open access journals (e.g. Björk, 2013 ; Laakso and Björk, 2021 ). However, while the choice of gold open access journals necessarily accommodates immediate open access, the choice of hybrid journals may also result in an article being published with green open access or even closed.…”

“…In their study of the business fields, Laakso and Björk did not find any top-tier gold open access journals within the discipline. The authors suggest this is a side-effect of evaluation practises encouraging submissions based on journal ranking lists, making it difficult for new journals (open access or not) to gain a foothold (Laakso and Björk, 2021 ).…”

The green, gold grass of home: Introducing open access in universities in Norway

“…The literature on open access varies considerably and covers topics like publishing business models and costs [16][17][18], policies and prevalence studies [2,[19][20][21], researchers' attitudes towards open access [22][23][24], predatory journals [25,26] and different impacts of open access [27,28], particularly academic impact [see 29]. These investigations are primarily empirical, and we have not been able to identify any studies on open access that use institutional theory, the study will therefore draw on the institutionalisation of the third mission.…”

Factors influencing Canadian HASS researchers’ open access publishing practices

“…However, a different story is seen in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) fields. Notably, OA uptake is relatively low in Social Sciences such as business, management, and accounting fields (Laakso & Björk, 2021;Piwowar et al, 2018).…”