Open access journal publishing in the business disciplines: A closer look at the low uptake and discipline-specific considerations

Abstract

The Internet has enabled efficient electronic publishing of scholarly journals and Open Access business models. Recent studies have shown that adoption of Open Access journals has been uneven across scholarly disciplines, where the business and economics disciplines in particular seem to lag behind all other fields of research. Through bibliometric analysis of journals indexed in Scopus, we find the share of articles in Open Access journals in business, management, and accounting to be only 6%. We further studied the Open Access availability of articles published during 2014–2019 in journals included in the Financial Times 50 journal list (19,969 articles in total). None of the journals are full Open Access, but 8% of the articles are individually open and for a further 35% earlier manuscript versions are available openly on the web. The results suggest that the low adoption rate of Open Access journals in the business fields is a side-effect of evaluation practices emphasizing publishing in journals included, in particular, ranking lists, creating disincentives for business model innovation, and barriers for new entrants among journals. Currently, most business school research has to be made Open Access through other ways than through full Open Access journals, and libraries play an important role in facilitating this in a sustainable way.