Alone, as remarked by Markram [6], the number of citations ofPLOS One (138,828) in 2017 was only slightly lower than the number of citations of Science and Nature combined (140,928), whereas the number of the top citations of the top three journals (350,351) was more than twice as large as that of the latter subscription journals combined.

Under these circumstances, continuing to rely on the old publication model for which manuscripts are sent for peer review waiting 9 months (for chemistry articles published in 2013 [7]), is no longer tenable also in chemistry.

Likewise to many other scholars, most research chemists have never received formal education on publishing scientific articles in the digital age [8]. Hence, what chemistry scholars currently need is updated information (and education) on open science of practical relevance to their work. It is enough to conduct a Boolean search on Google Scholar using the queries “open access” and “chemistry” or “open science” and “chemistry” to find out that few studies have been devoted to the role of open science in chemistry [1,9,10,11], including three studies [3, 12,13] on preprints in chemistry.

Suggesting avenues for quick uptake of OA publishing from research chemists in both developed and developing countries, this study offers a critical perspective on academic publishing in the chemical sciences that will be useful to inform the aforementioned education.

By early November 2020, for the subject “chemistry” the Directory of Open Access Journals listed 144 OA journals, 72 of which did not levy any APC [14]. Table 2 lists selected titles and fields amid the latter journals.

Table 2 . Ten selected OA chemistry journals not levying an APC.