Beyond Article Processing Charges: Exploring Institutional Barriers in Open Access Publishing

The current scholarly communication landscape has witnessed an increasing uptake of open access (OA) as funding agencies have vehemently shown their support for an immediate availability of funded research, either through OA journals or institutional repositories. However, OA uptake in some disciplines has remained low, particularly in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). Some existing studies have attributed this to disciplinary norms, limited funding to pay for article processing charges (APCs), and researchers’ preferences. As such, little is known about other factors that may be responsible for the low uptake of OA in the HSS disciplines beyond the commonly reported factor – APCs. There is currently a growing concern about inequities in the scholarly communication landscape as OA publishing has remained inaccessible and unaffordable to many researchers, particularly among researchers from the Global South. This poster is a summary of a larger study that sheds light on factors limiting OA publishing among HSS researchers in research-intensive universities in Canada, focusing on inequities, gender disparity, unequal privileges, and unsupportive institutional policies.