Open Access Publishing in Singapore: Trends and Policy Perspectives

Abstract

This study aims to give a comprehensive overview of open access (OA) publishing in Singapore from the trends and policy perspectives, containing different aspects of OA development (i.e., OA journals, OA repositories, and OA mandates and policies). Data for analyzing OA trends and policies were gathered through multiple databases as of 1st January 2024. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) was employed to extract sample OA journals that are being applied to investigate the main characteristics of Singapore’s OA journals. Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus were used to locate the overall quality of those OA journals indexed in DOAJ. OpenDOAR and ROARMAP were used to explore the status of OA repositories and OA mandates and policies, respectively. DOAJ indexes 50 Singapore’s OA journals. Among them, 19 journals (38.0%) were also indexed by WoS, while 15 (78.0%) ranked in Q3 and Q4. Meanwhile, 29 journals (58.0%) were indexed by Scopus, while 19 (around 65.5%) ranked between 25 percent and 75 percent in the respective subject. Additionally, 76.0% of OA journals adopt CC BY licensing, and another 16.0% adopt CC BY-NC licensing. From the publication fee perspective, two-thirds of OA journals do not charge any article processing fee, and 36.0% offer publication fee waivers or discount policies. Two of Singapore’s OA journals (4.0%) are awarded the DOAJ Seal. This paper also puts Singapore journals into the global from several perspectives to compare, such as subject classification, copyright & licensing, and journal charge policy, as well as figures out the cross-analysis on the characteristics of journals that are indexed in the DOAJ, WoS and Scopus. Furthermore, there are only 8 OA repositories from Singapore indexed in OpenDOAR. Searching through the ROARMAP database, Singapore has only 2 of the 27 policies classified in South-eastern Asia. Though the number of Singapore’s OA journals indexed in DOAJ shows an upward trend, such volume is not prominent globally. However, the quality of these OA journals is generally good, while the top journals in each subject are not very high, and the openness level is relatively high. In terms of OA repositories, OA mandates, and policy perspectives, Singapore’s volume is still minimal, which requires widespread attention and action from different levels in the country and policymakers' promotion of the OA movement.