Will accessing scientific knowledge ever become totally free? (Pictured here, the book tower at Prague's Municipal Library, the Czech Republic). Lysander Yuen/Unsplash, CC BYScientific research publishing is a particularly lucrative industry. The most recent estimates suggest that it generates around 19 billion US dollars (or 16.67 billion euros) in annual turnover, with margins of around 40 per cent. These staggering figures largely reflect the fact that the “Big Five” commercial publishers, such as Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and SAGE, are capitalising on work that is largely funded by public money.This monetisation takes place either by making a scientific article fee-paying, accessible via paid subscription, or by charging authors to publish in open access for readers. Yet most of the work required for publication – notably writing, peer review and a large part of the editorial work – is carried out free of charge by researchers. The direct consequence is that an institution or a country’s wealth still partly dictates access to scientific knowledge.PaywallsFor decades, the vast majority of research has been published behind paywalls. This means that scientists, their institutions and the general public have to pay to gain access to scientific findings. An individual can purchase access to a specific article for a few tens or sometimes a hundred euros. Research institutes, for their part, pay for subscriptions that often run into millions of euros to thousands of scientific journals so that their researchers can access these articles.Looking back, before the advent of the internet and the widespread publishing of journals in electronic format, it was understandable that the production of scientific articles incurred very high costs, particularly due to the print process and delivering journals to university libraries. Today, this justification no longer holds water.Production costs may have fallen sharply thanks to the digital distribution of articles, but publication costs have risen dramatically. In response to this privatisation of knowledge, Aaron Swartz published the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto in 2008, which aimed to raise awareness and highlight the lack of access for countries in the Global South.Against this backdrop, Alexandra Elbakyan set up Sci-Hub in 2011, a platform providing access to a vast number of scientific publications, which has become one of the largest leaks of scientific knowledge of our time. Although this initiative is based on an ethical argument for universal access to knowledge, it remains illegal and is condemned in many countries, and cannot be a sustainable solution to the problem of access to scientific knowledge.Is Open Access the answer?In the face of growing frustration at research results being locked behind paywalls, and the resulting significant inequalities in access to science, Open Access (OA), is increasingly being demanded by research funding agencies, and sometimes by governments themselves. The aim is simple: to ensure that research, particularly when funded by public money, is accessible as a common good.Today, while Open Access has become the norm, several models coexist and do not all address the issue in the same way.The three main approaches are Green OA, Gold OA and Diamond OA:Green OA involves publishing in a traditional, often commercial, journal and then depositing an accepted but unformatted version of the manuscript in an Open Access archive or an institutional repositoryGold OA makes the final article immediately accessible to everyone, but involves publication fees amounting (i.e. Article Processing Charge, APC) to several thousand euros, paid by the authors or their institutionsDiamond OA, finally, allows authors to publish content for free and gives readers free access, thanks to journals that are backed by scientific communities, university libraries or non-profit organisations.Green and Gold Open Access models remain dependent on commercial publishers and often entail hidden costs for researchers, institutions or funding bodies. In contrast, Diamond Open Access is community-driven, free for both authors and readers, and maintains research as a “public good” rather than a source of private profit. While Green Open Access improves access in the short term, it can also delay more profound structural changes by preserving the existing system. “Pay to read, pay to publish… Is science suffering from its journals?”, La Grande Conversation, The Conversation France – don’t forget to activate subtitles in English. Examples of diamond open accessThanks to recent advances in technology, it is easy to share computer code, and the scientific community, supported by public funding bodies, has come together to create Open Journal System, a ready-to-use software package for managing the entire editorial process of a scientific journal (from manuscript submission through peer review, editing, publication and dissemination).Today, the system is used in 148 countries worldwide and enables scientists themselves to manage the editorial side of journals free of charge. Among these journals are Sedimentologika, founded in November 2022, which will soon publish its fiftieth article in the field of sedimentology, and Planetary Research, which is set to publish its first article in the field of planetary science this month, are two journals that we helped to found.Other initiatives, organised as platforms, such as Sci|Post, which has historically been rooted in the field of physics, or Episciences, now offer models that extend to all fields of science, including the humanities and social sciences. At the more local level of institutions and universities, new academic publishing projects are emerging, such as POPS at Paris-Saclay University.Scientists have also proposed alternative ways of publishing, breaking free from the most common codes of conduct. For example, publishing on Cornell University’s arXiv, a vast, free repository containing 2.4 million articles, or on its French equivalent, HAL, allows manuscripts to be shared without peer review (so-called ‘preprint’ articles). The only criterion for access is that the contributor must have an institutional email address or be endorsed by their peers (a recent requirement, necessary to filter out fake articles generated by artificial intelligence). Scientific quality assurance therefore remains relatively limited, but the advantage lies in the immediacy of dissemination to everyone. Many highly influential and widely cited works, for example, in the field of artificial intelligence, such papers are thus accessible without ever having undergone peer review. However, most papers submitted to arXiv are subsequently published in scientific journals following a peer-review process. In such cases, arXiv serves primarily as a platform for rapid dissemination and scientific exchange, complementing rather than replacing the traditional editorial process.Some learned societies have long offered journals with Diamond Open Access, such as the Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des sciences or certain papers from the American Mathematical Society. Unfortunately, the Diamond Open Access business model can sometimes be difficult to establish, but innovative solutions are being proposed. For example, the Bulletin de la Société mathématique de France offers a Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) model. Under this model, readers pay an annual subscription fee, but once the break-even point is reached, all articles published in the journal become freely accessible ad vitam aeternam. The counter is reset to zero every year.Another way of publishing is to open up a free discussion about the article after it has been published. This type of approach has the advantage of allowing the article to be evaluated, but, as yet, no sustainable, large-scale solution has emerged. There are, however, some interesting options. For example, Peer Community In currently comprises 21 peer-reviewed thematic journals, publishes articles free of charge once the peer review process is complete, and leaves it up to authors to decide whether to resubmit to a traditional journal or not.Future dangers, but also opportunitiesScientific publishing is currently under threat from the capitalist logic of major commercial publishers, who profit from an aura of prestige and respectability that is, in fact, created by the scientists themselves. Breaking this system remains difficult, as the most renowned scientists are sought after by the most prominent journals, thereby helping to perpetuate this model. Furthermore, the big publishing groups control a significant proportion of the tools used for searching, indexing and linking scientific articles, thereby further enhancing the visibility of their own journals.Furthermore, these actors play an active role in producing scientometric pseudoscience by proposing quantitative metrics, such as citation counts, impact factors, etc. Although the limitations and pitfalls of these metrics have been extensively documented, and despite the existence of initiatives such as DORA, which calls for a reform of research evaluation, many public policies continue to rely solely on these indicators to assess science (prioritising the quantity of articles over their quality). Researchers’ careers are thus still largely assessed on the basis of the supposed prestige of the journals in which they publish.In the face of authoritarian tendencies and the promotion of ‘alternative’ facts, science must preserve its independence and maintain the public’s trust now more than ever. Against a backdrop of budgetary constraints, collectively regaining control of scientific publishing infrastructure in a more efficient, less costly and more sustainable manner appears to be a major challenge for the scientific community.Beyond the academic world, open access to knowledge also benefits the general public, teachers, organisations, decision-makers and the private sector by facilitating access to the latest scientific advances. Finally, making science more accessible does not simply mean disseminating more knowledge: it also helps to strengthen transparency, critical thinking and the collective ability to debate and respond to current challenges in an informed and reasoned manner. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!Frédéric Schmidt is a lecturer at Université Paris-Saclay, member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He was awarded public (Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CNES, ANR, UE, ESA, France 2030) and private (Airbus) research funding. He is the Editor of the scientific journal Planetary Research and founding member of Planetary Research Cooperative, a non-profit organisation which owns the review.Camille Thomas is co-founder and board member of Sedimentologika. He received funding to fund for Swiss scientific research. He works voluntarily as Editorial Manager for Sedimentologika and co-chairs the non profit organisation that owns the journal.Romain Vaucher is co-founder and board member of Sedimentologika. He works voluntarily as Editorial Manager for Sedimentologika and is vice-president of the non profit organisation which owns the journal.