National differences in dissemination and use of open access literature

Marc-André Simard; Gita Ghiasi; Philippe Mongeon; Vincent Larivière

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0272730

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 14, 2021
3 Nov 2021 Decision Letter - Alberto Baccini, Editor PONE-D-21-29770National differences in dissemination and use of open access literaturePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Simard, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. I agree with the two reviewers about the importance of your descriptive analysis. But I think that the paper should be revised before publication. The first and most problematic point is about data availability, as agreed by two reviewers. The main contribution of the paper is connected to the descriptive analysis of a very large database. But the underlying data, classifications and indicators adopted are not appropriately described and released. The paper appears not to be compliant with data availability policy as stated here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. I think that there are two possible solutions to overcome this problem. The first one is to release anonymized raw data containing only the minimum set of information useful for replicating the analysis. For example, if you limit the set of metadata to an anonymous ID, country, type of open access, discipline/fields I think that this is not in conflict with the legal restrictions imposed by Clarivate. As an alternative or better as a complement to the raw data you should release the aggregated and reworked data. I agree with Reviewer 2 that the presentation of data is not completely satisfactory, and I would suggest a better refinement of table and figures. Moreover, I think that the choice of omitting all computational details is a major shortcoming of the paper. For example, no clear definitions of fields/discipline classification of papers and normalizations are available for readers. Analogously readers are unaware of the classification of countries. I think that readers would benefit by a better documentation of your analysis. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 18 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. 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Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Alberto Baccini, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “YES - Vincent Larivière would like you acknowledge the Canada Research Chair program (grant 950-231768). Marc-André Simard would like to acknowledge the SSHRC Joseph Armand Bombardier Master’s Scholarship.” Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: “No” Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. 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If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ 6. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. Please clarify whether this publication was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you for this timely and very interesting paper! Please see some comments and suggestions below. I would add at low or no cost to this sentence in the Abstract: as well as the development of several new platforms that facilitate the publication of OA content at a low cost. Background - Open access models - I am not sure ROAR data is up to date. I would use OpenDOAR for current repository statistics https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/ - 5743 repositories as of October 2021 https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/view/repository_visualisations/1.html. And I would revise this sentence with data from OpenDOAR: "There are currently 4,607 repositories listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), including 1,021 in North America (839 in the United States,), 1702 in Europe, 179 in Africa, 1021 in Asia, and 584 in South America." I am not sure whether rumours is the accurate word in the sentence below, perhaps it could be replaced with discussions or something similar - In the United States, there have been rumors of a new OA initiative comparable to Plan S in Europe: this policy would make every... Perhaps it's also worth mentioning Redalyc https://www.redalyc.org/ and AmeliCA http://amelica.org/ together with SciELO publishing platforms? And mention that SciELO collaborates with South Africa http://www.scielo.org.za/? And what about repositories platforms - e.g. LA Referencia in Latin America https://www.lareferencia.info/en/, CAS IR Grid in China http://www.irgrid.ac.cn/? And I am not sure how accurate is this sentence in the Conclusion: This could be explained by the fact that APCs are mostly waived for Sub-Saharan countries (e.g. research4life countries). Perhaps you could add that APCs are mostly waived for low income countries and discounted for low-middle income countries? E.g. from Taylor and Francis https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/publishing-open-access/oa-funding-options/. I would be curious to see how many of OA journals in your study didn't charge APCs - APCs waivers have been mentioned as one of the reasons for OA publishing, but perhaps these were the journals that didn't charge APCs. And perhaps the UNESCO reference below could be updated with the latest version of the Open Science Recommendation that governments will vote on in November: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000378381.locale=en 27. UNESCO. Towards a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2021 Jul 16]. Available from: https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/open_science_brochure_en.pdf Reviewer #2: The manuscript is very clear and well presented and the data analysis has been done seriously. The corpus used is also clearly described and the literature review is quite well provided and informative. For all these qualities, it seems to me that the article deserves only minor revisions. That said, the article does have weaknesses and would benefit from substantial improvements. I provide in the following a set of comments made during the reading, which you will find in the uploaded version of the manuscript with comments. But before that, I think it is important to stress the two main weaknesses of the article: - First, the result section is very brief and limited to simple comments of graphs and maps. All the non data-related material is in the long introduction and background and in the conclusion. This is perhaps a choice of presentation and I would be ready to accept it if it is justified, but from a rhetorical point of view, it seems to me that the contribution of the article would perhaps be more convincing with an enriched result section, why not with the help of some arguments and interpretations that are actually stated elsewhere in the article. - Secondly, the maps and graphs suffer from many flaws and need to be reworked. This is all the more inconvenient as they occupy a central place in the result section and are therefore essential elements in the purpose and contribution of this article. Finally, the raw data cannot be shared because of the agreement with Clarivates, but the aggregated and reworked data (Z-score at country level) are certainly not affected by this same restriction and would benefit from being openly shared. In what follows, I report the comments made in a linear way when reading the article and which you can also find in the commented version of the manuscript: Page 5: As you processed the data and have indicators at the global scale, I believe you could share the Z-scores you computed at the country level Page 10 : - "with the creation of a dozen more journals" --> "with the creation of a dozen more electronic journals" - You should introduce the plan of the article at the end of the introduction (before the backgroud section) Page 13 :missing word before "at": "In terms of OA usage by different at the country level level" Page 14, last paragraph:Note that the result of the paper by Iyandemye and Thomas is already cited in a previous paragraph. Page 16, first paragraph: Note that the NIH policy is already mentioned earlier in the paper. Page 16, first paragraph: "has contributed to the expensive of PMC" --> "to the expansion of PMC" Page 18, first paragraph: Given that the number of journals with DOIs may not be very evenly distributed around the world, I think that ignoring articles without DOIs could skew your analysis. If you think so too, I think it would be worth mentioning this limitation. Page 18, first paragraph: "This data indicates whether the paper is published in OA or not, and in the OA category it belongs to" --> "and in the OA category it belongs to" (useless "in") Page 18, second paragraph, first sentence: useless "that" Page 18, last paragraph: less OA papers in the Humanities than in Medecine --> This result must be interpreted with caution since the type of social sciences and humanities journals indexed on the Web of Science are mostly owned by for profit publishers such as Wiley. In other words, dont you think the WoS coverage bias can affect this observation? Page 20, first sentence: "Figures 1 and 2 reveal that countries mostly cite OA more often than they publish in OA." --> You latter show that this really depends on the countries. Therefore this first sentence should be rewritten. If you really want to state that "most countries cite OA more often than they publish in OA", then I advise you to use a global statistics i.e. the % of countries citing OA more often than they publish in OA. Page 20, last sentence: It would be clearer for the reader if you specify in parenthesis after both indicator what is exactly the variable that you used (I believe it is thez-score mentioned in the method section but helping the reader would be useful here). Page 21, first sentence: The relation is not that strong at the global level indeed, justifying to look at the divergence between groups of countries regarding this statistical relation as you have done below. Page 22: "This could be explained by the fact that APCs are mostly waived for Sub-Saharan countries (e.g. research4life countries) but are not or only partially waived for most Middle Eastern and Asian countries" --> Therefore, It could have been interesting to consider groups of countries according to these differences instead of using the world bank's classification Page 23: "This may imply that even in the richest countries on the planet, researchers may still struggle to pay APCs." --> Or be opposed to them? Page 24: "Despite the existence of geological tensions" --> "geopolitical" instead of "geological" Page 31: Figure 1: This map is blur and the projection must be changed (the mercator projection is only relevant when considering sea travels since it preserves navigation angles) : https://www.britannica.com/science/Mercator-projection Page 32: The legend should be on the map and a precision on the unit of measure should be added Page 33 and 34: Figure 2: same remarks as for Figure 1a and Figure 1b Page 35, Figure 3: This graphic could be much more interesting and self-explanatory in labelling the nodes and in adding the formula of the regression line in a box. See for instance with R: https://www.r-graph-gallery.com/web-scatterplot-corruption-and-human-development.html and: https://rpkgs.datanovia.com/ggpubr/reference/stat_regline_equation.html Page 36, Figure 4: Same remark as for the previous plot, the quality of these plots is very low. In addition, the dots are too bigs which creates a lot of superpositions. Page 37, Figure 5: Blur but fine Page 38, appendix: The projection is incorrect and the legend is not explanatory (the unit of measure is missing) ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Iryna Kuchma Reviewer #2: Yes:** Marion Maisonobe [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-29770_reviewer.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272730.r001
Revision 1
24 May 2022 Author Response Editor comments: The first and most problematic point is about data availability, as agreed by two reviewers. The main contribution of the paper is connected to the descriptive analysis of a very large database. But the underlying data, classifications and indicators adopted are not appropriately described and released. The paper appears not to be compliant with data availability policy as stated here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. I think that there are two possible solutions to overcome this problem. The first one is to release anonymized raw data containing only the minimum set of information useful for replicating the analysis. For example, if you limit the set of metadata to an anonymous ID, country, type of open access, discipline/fields I think that this is not in conflict with the legal restrictions imposed by Clarivate. As an alternative or better as a complement to the raw data you should release the aggregated and reworked data. I agree with Reviewer 2 that the presentation of data is not completely satisfactory, and I would suggest a better refinement of table and figures. Moreover, I think that the choice of omitting all computational details is a major shortcoming of the paper. For example, no clear definitions of fields/discipline classification of papers and normalizations are available for readers. Analogously readers are unaware of the classification of countries. I think that readers would benefit by a better documentation of your analysis. Answer: We have added some information about the computational details and updated all of the figures. The data used is now also available. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “YES - Vincent Larivière would like to acknowledge the Canada Research Chair program (grant 950-231768). Marc-André Simard would like to acknowledge the SSHRC Joseph Armand Bombardier Master’s Scholarship.” Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: “No” Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. Answer: We have shared a dataset that allows reproduction of the analyses. 5. We note that Figures 1a, 2a, appendix1a and appendix1b in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figures 1a, 2a, appendix1a and appendix1b to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ Answer: The software we used for the maps (Tableau) uses maps from Open Street Map (see copyright notice in the bottom of our map) which has an open license: https://www.openstreetmap.org/ 6. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. Please clarify whether this publication was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. Answer: The original version was peer-reviewed and published as a part of the Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI, 2021) as a work in progress. The original version used older data and had less than 5 pages of content (can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/MASOA). For the new version, we updated the data and added more to every individual section. Comments Reviewer #1: Thank you for this timely and very interesting paper! Please see some comments and suggestions below. I would add at low or no cost to this sentence in the Abstract: as well as the development of several new platforms that facilitate the publication of OA content at a low cost. Answer: Thank you for the suggestion, we modified the sentence as suggested. Background - Open access models - I am not sure ROAR data is up to date. I would use OpenDOAR for current repository statistics https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/ - 5743 repositories as of October 2021 https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/view/repository_visualisations/1.html. And I would revise this sentence with data from OpenDOAR: "There are currently 4,607 repositories listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), including 1,021 in North America (839 in the United States,), 1702 in Europe, 179 in Africa, 1021 in Asia, and 584 in South America." Answer: Thank you, we added the number of repositories reported in OpenDOAR alongside the updated numbers from the ROAR. We kept the ROAR data since the registry provides the numbers by continent, which we find useful in the context of this study. The text now reads as follows: As of November 6 2021, there were 5,764 and 4,629 repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), respectively. The repositories are distributed as follows according to the ROAR data: Europe (36.8%), Asia (22.3%), North America (22.1%), South America (12.8%), Africa (3.9%), and Oceania (2.1%). I am not sure whether rumours is the accurate word in the sentence below, perhaps it could be replaced with discussions or something similar - In the United States, there have been rumors of a new OA initiative comparable to Plan S in Europe: this policy would make every… Answer: Thank you, we modified the sentence and used “discussions” instead. Perhaps it's also worth mentioning Redalyc https://www.redalyc.org/ and AmeliCA http://amelica.org/ together with SciELO publishing platforms? And mention that SciELO collaborates with South Africa http://www.scielo.org.za/? And what about repositories platforms - e.g. LA Referencia in Latin America https://www.lareferencia.info/en/, CAS IR Grid in China http://www.irgrid.ac.cn/? Answer: Thank you. All of the suggestions were added. And I am not sure how accurate is this sentence in the Conclusion: This could be explained by the fact that APCs are mostly waived for Sub-Saharan countries (e.g. research4life countries). Perhaps you could add that APCs are mostly waived for low income countries and discounted for low-middle income countries? E.g. from Taylor and Francis https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/publishing-open-access/oa-funding-options/. Answer: We have added the income levels in order to make the statement more accurate. Thank you. I would be curious to see how many of OA journals in your study didn't charge APCs - APCs waivers have been mentioned as one of the reasons for OA publishing, but perhaps these were the journals that didn't charge APCs. And perhaps the UNESCO reference below could be updated with the latest version of the Open Science Recommendation that governments will vote on in November: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000378381.locale=en 27. UNESCO. Towards a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2021 Jul 16]. Available from: https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/open_science_brochure_en.pdf Answer: Thank you. We have updated the reference and added a sentence on the official adoption of the Recommendation. Reviewer #2: The manuscript is very clear and well presented and the data analysis has been done seriously. The corpus used is also clearly described and the literature review is quite well provided and informative. For all these qualities, it seems to me that the article deserves only minor revisions. That said, the article does have weaknesses and would benefit from substantial improvements. I provide in the following a set of comments made during the reading, which you will find in the uploaded version of the manuscript with comments. But before that, I think it is important to stress the two main weaknesses of the article: - First, the result section is very brief and limited to simple comments of graphs and maps. All the non data-related material is in the long introduction and background and in the conclusion. This is perhaps a choice of presentation and I would be ready to accept it if it is justified, but from a rhetorical point of view, it seems to me that the contribution of the article would perhaps be more convincing with an enriched result section, why not with the help of some arguments and interpretations that are actually stated elsewhere in the article. Answer: Thank you for the comment. Indeed, we did not comment on the results within the results section on purpose. We chose to describe (results) and then discuss in the now renamed discussion and conclusion section. - Secondly, the maps and graphs suffer from many flaws and need to be reworked. This is all the more inconvenient as they occupy a central place in the result section and are therefore essential elements in the purpose and contribution of this article. Answer: The file conversion process had a very negative effect on the resolution of the files. When we noticed this, the submission had already been sent. New higher definition versions of the figures have been added. Thank you. Finally, the raw data cannot be shared because of the agreement with Clarivates, but the aggregated and reworked data (Z-score at country level) are certainly not affected by this same restriction and would benefit from being openly shared. Answer: We prepared a dataset that can be shared. Thank you. In what follows, I report the comments made in a linear way when reading the article and which you can also find in the commented version of the manuscript: Page 5: As you processed the data and have indicators at the global scale, I believe you could share the Z-scores you computed at the country level Answer: The Z-scores will be a part of the new dataset. Thank you. Page 10 : - "with the creation of a dozen more journals" --> "with the creation of a dozen more electronic journals" Answer: Added, thank you. - You should introduce the plan of the article at the end of the introduction (before the background section) Page 13 :missing word before "at": "In terms of OA usage by different at the country level" Answer: Thank you, we fixed the sentence. Page 14, last paragraph:Note that the result of the paper by Iyandemye and Thomas is already cited in a previous paragraph. Answer: Thank you, we modified the sentence to only refer to the part of the Iyandemye and Thomas results that relate to this paragraph, and thus removed the repetition. Page 16, first paragraph: Note that the NIH policy is already mentioned earlier in the paper. Answer: Thank you, we removed the second mention of the NIH policy. Page 16, first paragraph: "has contributed to the expensive of PMC" --> "to the expansion of PMC" Answer: Thank you, we made the correction. Page 18, first paragraph: Given that the number of journals with DOIs may not be very evenly distributed around the world, I think that ignoring articles without DOIs could skew your analysis. If you think so too, I think it would be worth mentioning this limitation. Answer: Thank you. We have added a sentence to mention this limitation. Page 18, first paragraph: "This data indicates whether the paper is published in OA or not, and in the OA category it belongs to" --> "and in the OA category it belongs to" (useless "in") Answer: Thank you, we made the correction. Page 18, second paragraph, first sentence: useless "that" Answer: Thank you, we made the correction. Page 18, last paragraph: less OA papers in the Humanities than in Medecine --> This result must be interpreted with caution since the type of social sciences and humanities journals indexed on the Web of Science are mostly owned by for profit publishers such as Wiley. In other words, don't you think the WoS coverage bias can affect this observation? Answer: The data source is definitely one of the limits of this study. We have added a sentence to reflect this situation in the discussion. Thank you. Page 20, first sentence: "Figures 1 and 2 reveal that countries mostly cite OA more often than they publish in OA." --> You latter show that this really depends on the countries. Therefore this first sentence should be rewritten. If you really want to state that "most countries cite OA more often than they publish in OA", then I advise you to use a global statistics i.e. the % of countries citing OA more often than they publish in OA. Answer: We removed this sentence as it was indeed problematic. Thank you. Page 20, last sentence: It would be clearer for the reader if you specify in parenthesis after both indicator what is exactly the variable that you used (I believe it is the z-score mentioned in the method section but helping the reader would be useful here). Answer: We have added the % of references and OA publications that the text referred to. Thank you. Page 21, first sentence: The relation is not that strong at the global level indeed, justifying to look at the divergence between groups of countries regarding this statistical relation as you have done below. Page 22: "This could be explained by the fact that APCs are mostly waived for Sub-Saharan countries (e.g. research4life countries) but are not or only partially waived for most Middle Eastern and Asian countries" --> Therefore, It could have been interesting to consider groups of countries according to these differences instead of using the world bank's classification Answer: That is a good point. However, we felt that using the World Bank’s classification gave us a good “frame” for this. We also wanted our results to be comparable to those of Evans and Reimer (2009) who also used the World Bank’s classification for countries. Page 23: "This may imply that even in the richest countries on the planet, researchers may still struggle to pay APCs." --> Or be opposed to them? Answer: Or both! Thank you, we added this to the paper. Page 24: "Despite the existence of geological tensions" --> "geopolitical" instead of "geological" Answer: Thank you, we made the correction. Page 31: Figure 1: This map is blur and the projection must be changed (the mercator projection is only relevant when considering sea travels since it preserves navigation angles) : https://www.britannica.com/science/Mercator-projection Answer: The software we used to generate the maps (Tableau) does not seem to allow different types of projection. Page 32: The legend should be on the map and a precision on the unit of measure should be added Answer: We fixed the map and the legend, thank you. Page 33 and 34: Figure 2: same remarks as for Figure 1a and Figure 1b Answer: We fixed the map and the legend, thank you Page 35, Figure 3: This graphic could be much more interesting and self-explanatory in labelling the nodes and in adding the formula of the regression line in a box. See for instance with R: https://www.r-graph-gallery.com/web-scatterplot-corruption-and-human-development.html and: https://rpkgs.datanovia.com/ggpubr/reference/stat_regline_equation.html Answer: Thank you, we redid the figures in R to make them nicer and clearer. Page 36, Figure 4: Same remark as for the previous plot, the quality of these plots is very low. In addition, the dots are too big which creates a lot of superpositions. Answer: Thank you, we redid the figures in R to make them nicer and clearer. Page 37, Figure 5: Blur but fine Answer: We increased the resolution of the figure to resolve this. Thank you. Page 38, appendix: The projection is incorrect and the legend is not explanatory (the unit of measure is missing) Answer: We fixed the maps and the legends, thank you. However, as previously stated, the software we used (Tableau) does not seem to allow the use of different projections. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS_simard_et_al_rebuttal_letter.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272730.r002
27 Jun 2022 Decision Letter - Alberto Baccini, Editor PONE-D-21-29770R1National differences in dissemination and use of open access literaturePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Simard, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. In my opinion, the suggestions of Reviewer 2 may be useful for improving the quality of your paper. I think however that it is in your complete responsability as authors to accept them or not. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 11 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Alberto Baccini, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (No Response) ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: I would like to thank the authors for the new version of their article and especially for the open access and sharing of the data. This gives a real added value to their contribution. Despite the changes made, I have identified a number of shortcomings in the revised text that will need to be corrected before the article can be published. 1. Contrary to what the authors have indicated, the repetition regarding the NIH policy is still present in the current version: to avoid this repetition, one option is to move the paragraph on NIH that is in the “OA models” section to the “initiatives and platforms” section (where the NIH policy is introduced). 2. Some references are not properly introduced, which can make them seem irrelevant or confusing (they are listed below). 3. Contrary to what was requested, the maps have not been redone. To solve this issue, we provide the authors with a script and a figure adapted from their data that they can reuse to generate Figure 1 and 2. We show in this script that it is possible to make a discretization of the z-score variable rather than representing it as a continuous variable. This approach allows to obtain a clearer figure and to better manage extreme values such as the score of Equatorial Guinea (in the authors' version, it seems that it has been removed (as the max is 2 on the legend) which is problematic). We also note that the data is missing for Greenland (given that there is a university in Greenland, is this due to missing data or an omission?) 4. Finally, we have a suggestion to make to improve the readability of the 1st part. As the first part of the article lists a large number of facts that made it possible to reconstruct a chronology of the development of Open Access: on re-reading, we think that it would be helpful to add a timeline or a summary listing the main events mentioned in the text in chronological order. This will facilitate the reading of the text. If the authors do not wish to add a new figure in the body of the text, they can add this timeline in an appendix. As such, it will be an additional result. In the following we list the changes requested and the problems identified as they appear in the text: Page 1: Replace "Psycholoquy" by "Psychology" Page 3: Replace "Bronze OA refers to publications that are openly directly" by "Bronze OA refers to publications that are open directly" Page 4: Miguel et al. is cited (between Pinowar et al and Basson et al) whereas it seems that contrary to these other references Miguel et al concentrate on the literature dealing with OA which is another matter and should be introduced as such. Page 4: Replace "their effects of the measurement of open access" by "their effects on the measurement of open access" Page 5: missing dot before reference number 8 (later in the text, we found that there are sometimes missing spaces before reference numbers: eg. before reference 21) In the “Initiative and Platforms” section: you should create a new paragraph for each geographic area: “In Europe”, “In Canada”, “In the US”, “In South America”, “In Asia”, “In Africa”. It will improve the clarity of this section. Page 7, in the paragraph about Canada: The reference to the OJS system (32) seems a bit out of context as the link between this system and OA is not explicated Page 10: The acronym “BOAI” is mentioned whereas it has never been introduced before Results section, 1st sentence: Replace "Tables 1 and 2 presents" by "Tables 1 and 2 present" Table 1 caption: missing parenthesis Figure 5: on the left part, green is in yellow and gold is in green Figure 1 and 2 + Appendix: the maps should be redraw with the help of the provided script (it is possible to change the colours if you wish to, and, if necessary, to add an intermediary class around zero to represent countries with z-scores equal to the world average) ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Iryna Kuchma Reviewer #2: Yes: Marion Maisonobe ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272730.r003
Revision 2
8 Jul 2022 Author Response Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: I would like to thank the authors for the new version of their article and especially for the open access and sharing of the data. This gives a real added value to their contribution. Answer: Thank you! Despite the changes made, I have identified a number of shortcomings in the revised text that will need to be corrected before the article can be published. 1. Contrary to what the authors have indicated, the repetition regarding the NIH policy is still present in the current version: to avoid this repetition, one option is to move the paragraph on NIH that is in the “OA models” section to the “initiatives and platforms” section (where the NIH policy is introduced). Answer: Our apologies for the confusion about that part. We have removed it from the paper. Thank you! 2. Some references are not properly introduced, which can make them seem irrelevant or confusing (they are listed below). Answer: We have fixed the references based on your suggestions. Thank you! 3. Contrary to what was requested, the maps have not been redone. To solve this issue, we provide the authors with a script and a figure adapted from their data that they can reuse to generate Figure 1 and 2. We show in this script that it is possible to make a discretization of the z-score variable rather than representing it as a continuous variable. This approach allows to obtain a clearer figure and to better manage extreme values such as the score of Equatorial Guinea (in the authors' version, it seems that it has been removed (as the max is 2 on the legend) which is problematic). We also note that the data is missing for Greenland (given that there is a university in Greenland, is this due to missing data or an omission?) Answer: We have redone the maps based on your suggestions and code provided. Thank you very much for your kindness. 4. Finally, we have a suggestion to make to improve the readability of the 1st part. As the first part of the article lists a large number of facts that made it possible to reconstruct a chronology of the development of Open Access: on re-reading, we think that it would be helpful to add a timeline or a summary listing the main events mentioned in the text in chronological order. This will facilitate the reading of the text. If the authors do not wish to add a new figure in the body of the text, they can add this timeline in an appendix. As such, it will be an additional result. Answer: We thank the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. However, we chose not to include a timeline in the article because of time constraints. In the following we list the changes requested and the problems identified as they appear in the text: Page 1: Replace "Psycholoquy" by "Psychology" Answer: Psycholoquy is the name of an early OA journal. Page 3: Replace "Bronze OA refers to publications that are openly directly" by "Bronze OA refers to publications that are open directly" Answer: We have changed the sentence. Thank you! Page 4: Miguel et al. is cited (between Pinowar et al and Basson et al) whereas it seems that contrary to these other references Miguel et al concentrate on the literature dealing with OA which is another matter and should be introduced as such. Answer: The reference has been moved to the next paragraph and reintroduced in a way that highlights its contribution (countries who contribute to OA as a topic). Page 4: Replace "their effects of the measurement of open access" by "their effects on the measurement of open access" Answer: We have changed the sentence. Thank you! Page 5: missing dot before reference number 8 (later in the text, we found that there are sometimes missing spaces before reference numbers: eg. before reference 21) Answer: Thank you for pointing that out. We believe that they have all been fixed now. In the “Initiative and Platforms” section: you should create a new paragraph for each geographic area: “In Europe”, “In Canada”, “In the US”, “In South America”, “In Asia”, “In Africa”. It will improve the clarity of this section. Answer: New paragraphs and titles have been added. Thank you! Page 7, in the paragraph about Canada: The reference to the OJS system (32) seems a bit out of context as the link between this system and OA is not explicated Answer: We removed the reference to the OJS as it is not necessarily an OA focused initiative. Thank you. Page 10: The acronym “BOAI” is mentioned whereas it has never been introduced before Answer: We added the acronym to the first mention of the BOAI. Thank you! Results section, 1st sentence: Replace "Tables 1 and 2 presents" by "Tables 1 and 2 present" Answer: Done, thank you! Table 1 caption: missing parenthesis Answer: Done, thank you! Figure 5: on the left part, green is in yellow and gold is in green Answer: Done, thank you! Figure 1 and 2 + Appendix: the maps should be redraw with the help of the provided script (it is possible to change the colours if you wish to, and, if necessary, to add an intermediary class around zero to represent countries with z-scores equal to the world average). Answer: We used your script to make the new figures. Thank you so much. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS_simard_et_al_rebuttal_letter_second_round.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272730.r004
26 Jul 2022 Decision Letter - Alberto Baccini, Editor National differences in dissemination and use of open access literature PONE-D-21-29770R2 Dear Dr. Simard, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Alberto Baccini, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272730.r005
Formally Accepted
1 Aug 2022 Acceptance Letter - Alberto Baccini, Editor PONE-D-21-29770R2 National differences in dissemination and use of open access literature Dear Dr. Simard: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Prof. Alberto Baccini Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272730.r006

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