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.
2 Current state of open access publishing in chemistry
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.