Building an equitable open future
Cambridge is leading the way in providing equitable routes to open access publishing.
In 2023, 63% of the research articles we published were open access, allowing these articles to be read, downloaded, re-used or cited by anyone, anywhere globally.
We know that open access research has a significantly higher readership and is easier to share. Open access articles published by Cambridge alone – hosted on our platform, Cambridge Core – receive on average 3.5 times more full text views and on average 1.6 times more citations. On Cambridge Core, average open access book downloads are nine times higher than non-OA books, and the average open access Element sees twelve times the downloads of non-OA Elements.
Open access plays an important part in allowing us to fulfil our mission of furthering the advancement of learning, knowledge and research worldwide.
"Our vision is to unlock the potential of high-quality research and build an equitable, sustainable open future. When that research reaches more people, it can benefit more people. This can help to drive innovation, lead to new discoveries and educate communities.
"As a university press that is driven by purpose, not by profit, the potential global impact of publishing open access is one of the main reasons we are committed to it. Working directly with our customers and partners to deliver new models and solutions is essential to being able to deliver on our mission."
Mandy Hill
Managing Director
What is open access?
Under traditional subscription models, readers, or their institutions, pay to access research. Open access makes research available openly online, with research published under Creative Commons license, allowing free access, distribution and reuse. However, when journals publish open access we need to continue to generate revenue for them to be sustainable. This funding comes from Article Processing Fees (APCs) for the publication of individual articles, or institutional publishing agreements; both of these models assume funding is available meaning researchers from low- and middle-income countries can struggle to publish their work open access.
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Institutions covered by OA publishing agreements
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Open access journals in 2024
Making open access work
Cambridge is aiming for the vast majority of research papers to be published fully open access by 2025 and is leading the way in its approach through innovative models, in consultation with authors and researchers, to achieve this ambition.
Researchers at over 2,500 institutions globally are able to publish their research open access thanks to publishing agreements signed in collaboration with our library customers.
Open access publishing agreements are just one route authors can take to publish research open access, but they are not available to everyone, especially those in low- and middle-income countries.
These agreements are just part of the transition to fully open access, as Mandy Hill told us.
"Open access publishing agreements have provided an important route towards open access for authors, irrespective of their funding. However, it’s important they are seen as a key stepping stone, not a destination or the only route, to full open access.
“We are building on this momentum to explore a range of business models which take us beyond the open access publishing agreement and establish new and innovative systems that ensure the world's academics, students and citizens can enjoy open access in a sustainable manner."
From open access to open equity
The shift to open access publishing comes with challenges, including financial barriers. In making our open access transition, we need to ensure that barriers to readership are not replaced with barriers to authorship in certain subject areas, as well as in countries where research funding may be scarce. When researchers from all countries can freely access, use and build on new discoveries, it leads to better solutions for global issues.
As Mandy Hill put it: “Well-funded scholars in economically developed nations and their institutions can typically cover publishing costs, whether directly through article processing charges or via institutional open access publishing agreements. This is not true of their peers in many other parts of the world, who therefore risk being prevented from publishing in international open access journals.”
“Open access alone is insufficient. We need to aim for open equity.” Mandy Hill
Removing the barriers to open access publishing
Recognising these barriers, the team worked closely with a group of librarians and funders to launch the award-winning Cambridge Open Equity Initiative in April 2023 – an initiative to fund open access publishing where there is a cost barrier for authors. This ensures authors from over 100 low- and middle-income countries without coverage through institutional open access agreements do not have to pay article processing charges to publish in Cambridge journals. The approach is delivered through collective funding, bringing together financial support from Cambridge and our institutional partners.
“…the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative (COEI) caught our eye because of its specific approach to addressing inequities in funding in low- and middle-income countries…It stood out for us from other OA initiatives which can seem very similar to each other and therefore difficult to know which to choose. It's great that the COEI has received the IPG Impact Award and been recognised for its impact and that helped us decide to put some more money into it this year.” - Librarian, contributing UK institution.
Professor Dixon Chibanda of London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), joint Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, and founder of Friendship Bench, Zimbabwe, sees this as a way to expand access to and the prominence of research discoveries. Professor Chibanda said: “This will enable the rich practical lessons from the Global South to be shared with the global scientific community. I hope other major publishers will follow.”
We are committed to ensuring that our open access transition is equitable, and that we provide a pathway for all authors to publish within our open access program, regardless of their circumstances. While open access publishing agreements form the backbone of our open access funding solution, a number of revenue sources make it possible for us to support authors across the publishing spectrum, including those without access to funding.
In 2023, 63% of our research articles were published under an open access license; of these, 6% were unfunded. Those unfunded open access research articles represent authors publishing in journals that are newly launching; those publishing in journals that are newly flipping to open access; and those who simply do not have access to an open access publishing agreement or funds for paying APCs.
Bringing research communities together
Collaboration is key for driving impact and paving the way towards a fully open future.
Cambridge’s mission to make content widely available also includes the expansion of its publishing portfolio with new journal concepts and publishing partners, aiming to further advance scholarly debate across various disciplines.
In the past year we have signed new partnerships to publish journals from learned societies such as the Economic Science Association (ESA), the Psychometric Society, the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology, and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR).
As part of our commitment to open access within the humanities and social sciences, we have launched our new journal series, Cambridge Forum. The series will support cross-disciplinary conversations on urgent issues with profound relevance to societies globally. The series will play a pivotal role in a rapidly developing research landscape. Each Cambridge Forum journal will focus on a central topic, publishing curated themed issues that bring together peer reviewed research, offering scholars and readers a platform that is responsive to world events.
Also within the humanities we are launching a new journal, Public Humanities, which seeks to bridge the connection between the academic and everyday life. An open access publication, the journal will demonstrate the breadth, depth, and value of the humanities in its varied contributions to public life, and will engage with a wide range of issues, authors, and readers. The Editors-in-Chief say that Public Humanities will be “fun, fearless, and actively engaged with the world.”
In 2025 we will be launching two new journals in our Cambridge Prisms series, Cambridge Prisms: Carbon Technologies and Cambridge Prisms: Energy Transitions. Cambridge Prisms is a series of fully open access journals that map out and build connections in cross-disciplinary subject areas to address real-world challenges. Research steps out of subject silos, encouraging collaboration between researchers from different disciplines, making it easy for readers to find relevant content.
“This is an exciting time for our journals program at Cambridge. We continue to invest in open access, bringing together and supporting humanities and social science communities through new launches.”
Ella Colvin, Director of Publishing, Journals
Flipping books open
Beyond journal articles, Cambridge is pushing forward its open access model for selected books.
Flip it Open, whereby a selection of titles are published and sold like any other, through regular channels initially launched as a pilot with 28 titles; the initiative is now in full programme mode containing 100 books. Once a title meets a set amount of revenue, it is converted to open access and published on Cambridge Core where it is freely accessible to a global audience.
The success of the scheme cannot be underestimated, with titles seeing increases in usage many times over what they were before the conversion to open access. One title, Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution, had not been read in Haiti itself before it was converted to open access. Following its open access publication it has been accessed in 106 countries globally (now including Haiti), up from 34 pre-conversion.
Ben Denne, Director of Books Publishing, said, “We’ve had an amazing response from the OA community and the authors involved in the pilot, and also a brilliant response from our library partners. It is only with their support that we can make the flips happen, and they have just been brilliant to work with.”
Our Cambridge Elements format goes from strength to strength, with 170 published open access Elements.
"Cambridge cannot do this alone. We continue to work with our partners, authors, researchers and funders to build an equitable open future. We are grateful to our partners, including librarians and university leaders, for recognising the opportunity to accelerate open research worldwide. Together we will continue to push for a more equitable open global research system." Mandy Hill
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