Hurdles to open access publishing faced by authors: a scoping literature review from 2004 to 2023

Over the past two decades, numerous widespread efforts and individual contributions to shift scientific publishing to open access (OA) have faced a number of obstacles. Due to the complexity of knowledge production dimension and knowledge dissemination, the challenges encountered by researchers, publishers and readers differ. While examples of such barriers exist across multiple parties, no attempt has been made to synthesize these for active researchers. Thus, this scoping review explores the barriers documented in the scientific literature that researchers encounter in their pursuit of publishing open access. After screening 1280 relevant sources, 113 papers, published between 2004 and 2023, were included in the review. A total of 82 distinct barriers were identified and grouped into four subclusters: Practical Barriers, Lack of Competency, Sentiment, and Policy and Governance. The largest cluster in terms of barriers assigned was Sentiment, accounting for 51.2% ( n = 42) of all barriers identified, suggesting that perceived barriers are the strongest determinants of publishing OA, while the most frequently occurring barrier was ‘high article processing charges’, reported in 88 papers. Furthermore, burdens faced specifically due to the location of the researcher were identified. Understanding and acknowledging these barriers are essential for their effective elimination or mitigation.

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