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<p>Free access to research articles has been a key objective for an important part of the scientific community worldwide. Over the past 20&#xa0;years, this debate has been driven mainly by researchers and agencies in Europe, with the principal proposal being to follow the gold route, which implies transferring publication costs from readers to authors, under the promise of better access to knowledge and greater research visibility. This discussion has since spread to the rest of the world, leading to various declarations, initiatives, and public policies. However, Latin America addressed this issue very early on— even before the term <i>open access</i> was coined—through the creation of the SciELO network, a robust initiative that has been largely overlooked in the European discussion. In this work, we analyze how the open access debate has influenced Latin American publishing trends and the consequences of these changes, particularly for the SciELO network, using Chilean scientific productivity as a proxy. We compiled publications led by Chilean authors from Scopus and SciELO between 2011 and 2023. Together with data from DOAJ and Scimago, we performed a complete statistical characterization of the dataset. We found a rapidly increasing number of articles published under the gold open access model in English, apparently growing at the expense of SciELO publications. The main driver of this growth has been articles in natural science journals and two for-profit publishers: MDPI and Frontiers. Citation metrics indicate that gold open access articles have only moderate visibility, lower than other open access models. The total amount spent on APCs by Chilean researchers was estimated at USD 9 million in 2023 alone, illustrating the high cost of adopting the European model in a country that already has an effective open access solution. We hope these results contribute to public policy discussions at the local, regional, and global levels, especially since many European researchers have viewed SciELO as an example of an alternative to the costly gold model promoted by Plan S.</p>

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Open access dynamics in Latin America: insights from the Chilean case

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年12月7日

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  • Poch Andrea,
  • Monares Pablo,
  • Bravo-Marchant María Soledad,
  • Villanelo Felipe

摘要

Free access to research articles has been a key objective for an important part of the scientific community worldwide. Over the past 20 years, this debate has been driven mainly by researchers and agencies in Europe, with the principal proposal being to follow the gold route, which implies transferring publication costs from readers to authors, under the promise of better access to knowledge and greater research visibility. This discussion has since spread to the rest of the world, leading to various declarations, initiatives, and public policies. However, Latin America addressed this issue very early on— even before the term open access was coined—through the creation of the SciELO network, a robust initiative that has been largely overlooked in the European discussion. In this work, we analyze how the open access debate has influenced Latin American publishing trends and the consequences of these changes, particularly for the SciELO network, using Chilean scientific productivity as a proxy. We compiled publications led by Chilean authors from Scopus and SciELO between 2011 and 2023. Together with data from DOAJ and Scimago, we performed a complete statistical characterization of the dataset. We found a rapidly increasing number of articles published under the gold open access model in English, apparently growing at the expense of SciELO publications. The main driver of this growth has been articles in natural science journals and two for-profit publishers: MDPI and Frontiers. Citation metrics indicate that gold open access articles have only moderate visibility, lower than other open access models. The total amount spent on APCs by Chilean researchers was estimated at USD 9 million in 2023 alone, illustrating the high cost of adopting the European model in a country that already has an effective open access solution. We hope these results contribute to public policy discussions at the local, regional, and global levels, especially since many European researchers have viewed SciELO as an example of an alternative to the costly gold model promoted by Plan S.