Access to global health research. Prevalence and cost of gold and hybrid open access

As it is a priority of global health research (GHR) to achieve equity in health worldwide, there is an increased demand and expectation that knowledge be shared freely and without barriers. Making research findings available for free to readers by publishing open access (OA) is thus central to GHR. Several studies have assessed the extent to which different forms of OA prevail but despite the importance of free access to knowledge in GHR, particular empirical evidence is missing. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the extent to which GHR papers indexed in PubMed are published OA and how much it costs to publish in gold and hybrid OA journals. Findings show that between 2010 and 2014 as few as 18% of papers were published in gold OA journals, 7% published as hybrid OA (i.e., OA papers in subscription journals), while more than 60% were behind paywalls. Costs for gold OA amounted to $990,619 for 404 papers, whereas $722,631 were spent on article processing charges (APCs) of 223 hybrid papers. The majority of APCs were obtained by large commercial publishing houses known for exorbitant profit margins.