Hybrid Open Access and Author Choice: What the Report Covered
A hybrid open access journal keeps its subscription model but lets authors pay a fee to make individual articles free to read. A report titled "The Role of Hybrid Open Access in Extending Author Choice" examined that option from the author's side. It is cited in the scholarly literature.
The question of hybrid open access and author choice sits inside a larger change in how journals are funded, which is traced in how academic publishing evolved.
What is a hybrid open access journal?
A hybrid journal charges a fee to make individual articles open while keeping its subscription model for the rest. The fee is usually called an article processing charge, or APC. Readers without a subscription can open the paid-for articles; every other article in the same issue stays behind the paywall.
Take a journal that publishes twenty articles in an issue. If the authors of three of them pay the fee, those three are free to read for everyone, and the other seventeen still require a subscription. The author, not the reader, decides case by case, which is why the arrangement is described as author choice.
Hybrid open access journals differ from fully open access journals, where every article is free to read and the journal has no subscriptions at all.
The report looked at hybrid open access as an option available to authors. According to the reference used by MDPI, it was written by van der Graaf, Johnson and Chiarelli and titled "The Role of Hybrid Open Access in Extending Author Choice." It appeared as a final report with a separate executive summary.
The Publishing Research Consortium, active until 2018, published it on its own website, on a page dated January 2018; the paper that cites it, Matthias, Jahn and Laakso in Publications, gives 2019.
The report does not appear in a live copy on this site.
How is hybrid OA discussed today?
Today the debate centers on cost, on who pays, and on whether subscription and article fees overlap. The table sets out the three models that come up most often in that discussion.
| Model | Who pays | Where it appears in the sources |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid journal | The author, or a funder or institution on the author's behalf, pays an APC for each open article; subscribers pay for the rest | The subject of the report and of the data tool described below |
| Fully open access journal | Authors, funders or institutions cover publishing costs; readers pay nothing | The starting point of the Publications paper on journals that flip to open access and, in some cases, back again |
| Transformative agreement | A library or consortium negotiates one contract with a publisher that covers both reading and publishing | The context for which libraries and consortia want hybrid OA data |
The paper by Matthias, Jahn and Laakso is about "reverse flips," meaning journals that move in the opposite direction from the usual shift toward open access. It places hybrid models inside the wider movement described in the shift toward open scholarly publishing.
On the data side, the Hybrid Open Access Dashboard, or HOAD, was built for libraries and consortia that need figures on the uptake, costs and impact of hybrid open access. It draws on Crossref and OpenAPC. Najko Jahn, Maximilian Held and Henrieke Walter developed it at the Göttingen State and University Library. Its repository describes it as a pilot that is no longer developed and points to a newer dashboard.
Libraries negotiate transformative agreements together, and that practice is covered in library and publisher consortia. The overlap between subscription income and article fees, meaning paying once as a subscriber and again as an author, is often called double dipping.
Where to read the original report
The report is cited as follows:
- van der Graaf, M., Johnson, R. and Chiarelli, A., "The Role of Hybrid Open Access in Extending Author Choice," Publishing Research Consortium, final report and executive summary, listed by MDPI as 2019.
- The citing paper, Matthias, L., Jahn, N. and Laakso, M., "The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It," Publications 7(2):23, 2019, is available from the publisher through its DOI, 10.3390/publications7020023.
For data on uptake after the report, see publishing metrics and data.
FAQ
What is hybrid open access?
Hybrid open access is a model in which a subscription journal makes selected articles free to read after the author, or someone paying for the author, covers a fee. The rest of the journal stays on subscription.
According to the MDPI reference, the authors are van der Graaf, Johnson and Chiarelli. The Publishing Research Consortium published it, and the year is 2018 or 2019 depending on whether the website or the citation is used.
Where can I track hybrid OA data?
HOAD, built from Crossref and OpenAPC records, was a pilot for this purpose. It is no longer developed, and its repository points to a newer dashboard.
Sources
- van der Graaf, M., Johnson, R. and Chiarelli, A. (2018/2019). "The Role of Hybrid Open Access in Extending Author Choice." Publishing Research Consortium. Cited in the Matthias, Jahn and Laakso paper below.
- Matthias, L., Jahn, N. and Laakso, M. (2019). "The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It." MDPI Publications 7(2):23.
- Jahn, N., Held, M. and Walter, H. Hybrid Open Access Dashboard (HOAD), Göttingen State and University Library, listed above.