Inter-Research (IR) has long recognised the high value of open research to furthering the aims of science. The process of converting all 8 IR journals to fully Open Access (OA) publication began in 2013. So far, 4 titles have ‘flipped’ to being fully OA journals.
The academic market desires that publishers phase out the ‘hybrid’ publication model (journals that have a mix of subscription and OA content). Academic journals should either be fully OA or fully subscription-based. If subscription-based, the publication model should then allow "Green" OA, that is, the deposit of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or the final PDF in an open repository under a CC-BY license.
The remaining 4 IR hybrid titles:
are therefore attempting to transform to fully Open Access publication. This can only happen when the Open Access model is economically viable and fully supported by the market. The alternative, to transform back to subscription-only journals, is not a desirable option because of the considerable advantages of Open Access.
What are the advantages of publishing Open Access?
OA articles attract far more attention than non-OA articles, in some cases more than 10-fold. OA articles are immediately available to a much broader audience, including the general public. This potentially results in a wider and greater impact and faster citation growth (see e.g. the tables in 'Open Access penetration' below). IR OA articles are published under the Creative Commons by Attribution v.4.0 License (CC-BY). The original copyright holders (usually the authors) retain the copyright. The article can be freely reproduced provided the original authors, published source, and CC-BY License are acknowledged.
The transformation journey so far (to end September 2024)
The 4 IR hybrid journals were in the Plan S Transformative Journal program 2021–2024. Failing to meet the yearly increase in OA penetration mandated by Plan S, they were expelled from the program. The current OA content of each of the 4 hybrid journals is <50% and the hybrid publication model remains in place for 2025. Various OA publication models are being assessed. The Article Processing Charge (APC) model would require a substantial increase in the APC to support all 8 IR journals. The popularly touted Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) model is excluded by some market segments just like the hybrid publication model. Approaches to national or other OA funding consortia have been unresponsive so far. Uptake of the Read and Publish subscription has been very low (if interested contact subscriptions@int-res.com). The authors of >50% of our accepted articles in each of the hybrid journals still elect to publish with subscriber access. They indicate the choice is due to the unavailability of OA publication funding. The goal of transforming to full OA publication remains, but the viable pathway to achieve it is not yet clear.
Concurrently, IR is also working to streamline and economize its review and production processes. The first step is considerable investment in a major technological upgrade of the IR website that is expected to be implemented early in 2025.
Open Access penetration
Original Research (OR) includes the IR categories ‘Research Article’ and ‘Note’ (both are peer-reviewed) and excludes ‘Review Article’, ‘Opinion Piece’, ‘Comment’ and ‘Reply Comment’, and editorial content such as ‘Introduction’, ‘Editorial’ and ‘Obituary’. Thus, the data reported in the table does not represent the full number of articles published in a year.
| Journal | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||
| Total OR published (n) | Total OR published Open Access (n) | Percentage Open Access | Total OR published (n) | Total OR published Open Access (n) | Percentage Open Access | Total OR published (n) | Total OR published Open Access (n) | Percentage Open Access | |
| Aquatic Microbial Ecology | 11 | 4 | 36.4% | 15 | 3 | 20.0% | 24 | 9 | 37.5% |
| Climate Research | 21 | 10 | 47.6% | 32 | 11 | 34.4% | 38 | 3 | 7.9% |
| Diseases of Aquatic Organisms | 53 | 12 | 22.6% | 73 | 27 | 37.0% | 88 | 17 | 19.3% |
| Marine Ecology Progress Series | 219 | 80 | 36.5% | 286 | 95 | 34.0% | 363 | 118 | 32.5% |
Performance metrics
Real-time data from CrossRef on article citations can be obtained by clicking on the ‘Cited by’ button at the bottom of the web abstract page for each article. Work on providing access to usage and online attention data at the individual article level is in progress as part of the website upgrade project.
The data in the table below clearly demonstrate that OA content gets more attention than subscriber content soon after publication. Download and citation data are as at early to mid-May of the following year (so e.g. data for 2021 were gathered mid-May 2022), except for citation data 2023 which was gathered early October 2024. Avg. cit. = average citations; avg. downl. = average downloads
| Year published and Journal | Subscription Content | Open Access Content | ||
| Avg. cit. per article | Avg. downl. per article | Avg. cit. per article | Avg. downl. per article | |
| 2023 | ||||
| Aquatic Microbial Ecology | 0.2 | 15.2 | 1.8 | 491.0 |
| Climate Research | 0.3 | 6.3 | 3.8 | 491.0 |
| Diseases of Aquatic Organisms | 0.5 | 17.7 | 2.5 | 1246.7 |
| Marine Ecology Progress Series | 0.7 | 37.8 | 2.3 | 817.9 |
| 2022 | ||||
| Aquatic Microbial Ecology | 0.8 | 55.2 | 0.0 | 456.3 |
| Climate Research | 0.8 | 27.8 | 0.6 | 433.5 |
| Diseases of Aquatic Organisms | 0.6 | 22.6 | 0.9 | 515.6 |
| Marine Ecology Progress Series | 0.8 | 105.2 | 1.5 | 755.2 |
| 2021 | ||||
| Aquatic Microbial Ecology | 0.4 | 22.9 | 0.8 | 568.9 |
| Climate Research | 0.7 | 8.5 | 1.3 | 406.0 |
| Diseases of Aquatic Organisms | 0.8 | 24.8 | 0.9 | 515.9 |
| Marine Ecology Progress Series | 1.2 | 73.4 | 1.7 | 706.1 |
Pricing transparency
Inter-Research decided it could not contribute to the Plan S journal pricing comparison tool due to the cost and effort to check the legality and compliance of the overly heavy-handed Plan S contract under German Law. Information on the proportion of the Article Processing Charge (APC) that contributes to the various stages of the publication process on the Inter-Research website is planned for later in 2025.