Cambridge University Press drops fees for low-income countries

One of the world’s biggest university presses is to waive open access publishing fees for academics in low- and middle-income countries.

Under the new pilot scheme from Cambridge University Press (CUP), scholars from more than 5,000 institutions in 107 countries – including Afghanistan, Albania, Ukraine and Zimbabwe – will be able to publish their research unpaywalled in 400 journals at no cost to them or their employer.

CUP, the second biggest university press behind Oxford University Press, will also remove article processing charges – typically of about £2,000, depending on the journal – for independent scholars from those low- and middle-income countries using a simple form.

Fee-paying institutional partners, such as major university libraries, will be encouraged to make voluntary contributions towards the scheme.

The Cambridge Open Equity Initiative, which will launch in July, is designed to combat global inequality in publishing which has often seen scholars from developing countries unable to afford the APCs charged by some publishers, although fee waivers are offered, usually on a case-by-case basis.

With academics denied the larger audience allowed by open access publishing, their work is cited less often, thereby worsening h-index scores and other impact factors that are sometimes used in hiring and promotion decisions.

By making free-to-read publishing automatically available to those in lower- or middle-income countries, CUP aims to tackle these inequalities in readership and citations, said Mandy Hill, director of academic at CUP.

“As open access shifts costs from readers to authors, we should guard against unintended consequences – especially in an unequal global higher education system,” said Ms Hill.

“We have chosen to take this collaborative approach to create the fund rather than adding more on to article processing charges and transformative agreement prices, as we believe it gives greatest transparency,” she added.

The scheme was welcomed by Dixon Chibanda, joint editor-in-chief of Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health and founder of Friendship Bench, a mental health support organisation based in Zimbabwe.

“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,” said Professor Chibanda, a clinical psychology professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Curtis Brundy, associate university librarian for scholarly communications and collections at Iowa State University, added that it was important to “maintain our focus on equity as we transition to open access”.

“The Cambridge Open Equity Initiative helps the community to overcome both financial and administrative barriers, ensuring that scholars have the opportunity to publish regardless of the availability of funding,” he said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com