The Norwegian Publishing Landscape – an Overview and Recent Changes

In Norway, academic publishing became part of the funding system for higher education from 2006 onwards. In the funding system for higher education institutions, academic outputs in the form of journal articles and scholarly books have been one of several performance indicators in the funding system. Accountable to a national certification register of academic journals and publishers, higher education institutions are economically rewarded based on the number of articles (author shares in case of co-authoring), the quality of the journal/publisher, and whether there is a higher increase in publishing output compared with other institutions. Since its establishment the Norwegian system has also inspired similar systems in countries such as Finland, Denmark, Belgium (Flanders), Portugal and Poland (Aagaard et al. Reference Aagaard, Bloch and Schneider2015). National governments and intermediate government bodies have been directly engaged in the international and especially the European research policy agenda, although policy downloading – adaptation of European policies – from the EU is routine in the Norwegian higher education system (Karlsen Reference Karlsen2015). Key national actors have also been present and at times acted as key policy entrepreneurs in developing the OA agenda, not least the Research Council of Norway (RCN) (Smits and Pells Reference Smits and Pells2022). A major factor in the Norwegian case of OA is the role that the then director of the RCN played in the European arena (Smits and Pells Reference Smits and Pells2022). As the RCN is the only research council in Norway and in most areas has the monopoly on the distribution of research funding in the national competitive arena, its initiatives are important in Norwegian higher education. Hence, when the then director pushed for OA publication and the Ministry eventually made it a requirement, this decision had a huge impact on the direction that the whole national system for research would take. The RNC director’s central position at the European policy arena through CoAlition S strengthened his position as a ‘policy entrepreneur’ in the domestic setting.

While the publishing indicator was introduced as part of the funding system for higher education, the system has also had unintended effects, not least impacting the individual academic, as the scores in publication points have been applied to other settings such as individual promotion, career-assessment processes, etc. The system has been criticized as being too focused on metrics and too much inspired by EU-driven governance reforms (Karlsen Reference Karlsen2015), although it has also had its supporters, who advocate that sharing the findings of research projects and activities is closely aligned with key values and obligations for academic staff in developing a well-functioning science system (Carling et al. Reference Carling, Erdal, Harstad, Knutsen, Lappegård, Skardhammar and Østby2018). Hence, one could argue that the publishing indicator was designed in a way that matched the norm set of scientific research (cf. Merton Reference Merton1973).

Nevertheless, the success of the introduction of the link between the national funding system and establishing an indicator for academic publishing comes at a cost. In 2019 alone, the combined costs related to subscriptions and article processing charges were 482 million NOK – an increase of over 7% from the previous year (Karlstrøm et al. Reference Karlstrøm, Wenaas and Røeggen2021).

The overlapping incentives related to funding and individual career development, and the matching of these incentives with academic norms, are probably important factors driving the rather rapid increase in the total volume of academic journal articles and books in Norway after the introduction of the new system, although a general increase in the funding level of the sector most likely has contributed as well (Aagaard et al. Reference Aagaard, Bloch and Schneider2015). An evaluation of the publication indicator in the funding system found not only that the system increased the research output in the form of articles and books but had little impact on the share of international collaboration and research impact. More updated and longitudinal data have demonstrated that, over time, citation rates for Norwegian academic journal articles have increased to currently 20% above world average, and with a continuing increase in the number of articles and books produced. Hence, if citations should be regarded as a proxy for academic quality, the indicator seemed to have boosted both the quantity and the quality of Norwegian research output.

However, in the last decade, more attention has also been given to open access to articles, and between 2013 and 2020 the share of open access journal articles increased from 39% to 82% of all articles involving Norwegian academics in the higher-education sector (Karlstrøm et al. Reference Karlstrøm, Wenaas and Røeggen2021). Hence, currently, the overwhelming majority of scientific articles with Norwegian authors/co-authors are published as open access. In the first part of this period, most of the growth was related to green open access articles (repositories), while hybrid and transformative agreements have strongly increased in the latter part of the period (Karlstrøm et al. Reference Karlstrøm, Wenaas and Røeggen2021).

Transformative agreements – so-called publish-and-read (PAR) agreements – were launched in Norway in 2019 and since then have covered all the larger international publishing houses and more than 10,000 journals (Sivertsen Reference Sivertsen2022). These agreements have had a substantial impact on open access. In 2020, University of Oslo researchers authored or co-authored 5642 articles, and 1700 of them were published in ‘pure’ OA journals. The effect of the transformative agreements has been a further boost in open access articles, but they have also had the effect that so-called diamond open access articles have been reduced in favour of hybrid articles (Sivertsen Reference Sivertsen2022). For those publishers not included in the transformative agreements, the trend is that gold options – i.e. where the authors have to pay an article-processing charge (APC) – are increasing rapidly. New ‘mega-journals’ are also becoming popular outlets for Norwegian authors, especially journals from the Switzerland-based publishing house MDPI (Sivertsen Reference Sivertsen2022). The latter development may be worrisome as some of the journals may represent challenges with respect to the quality of the review process. An example is that the journal Sustainabilty recently was removed from the certified Norwegian register of academic journals and books as an outlet qualifying for reimbursement in the national funding system.

In general, those journals experiencing the highest growth in articles from Norwegian authors are not those that are certified as being ‘a leading journal’ in the Norwegian register for academic journals and books. Hence, in a recent study, Sivertsen (Reference Sivertsen2022: 16) concluded that despite existing transformative agreements, it is the gold options based on APCs that are evidencing the highest growth rate. A similar conclusion has been reached in another recent study by Wenaas and Gulbrandsen (Reference Wenaas and Gulbrandsen2022: 19), which argued that current gold open access publication patterns correlate negatively with the journal rankings in the Norwegian register for journals and books. In fact, the overall consequences of the PAR agreements have had the exact opposite effect to part of the stated government ambition with OA policy, that is, to curtail the market power of private for-profit publishers, in particular the ‘big five’ (Open Science 2023).

However, the Norwegian government has also taken steps to stimulate open access journals embedded in diamond options and has taken the initiative to financially support 28 Norwegian journals in smaller disciplines within the social sciences and humanities (the NÅHST initiative) (UiO 2023). The 28 journals covered can be seen as a way to support Norwegian-language scientific journals, as the international market for scientific publishing is becoming more competitive.

Interestingly, the PAR agreements have also contributed to changes in the organizational ecosystem set up to fund and negotiate academic publishing in Norway. In the national setup for developing and implementing OA policy, the institutional level was given a key role in interpreting how to advance towards the 2024 target. The national consortia negotiating with the major publishers were used to push for changing the commercial regimes for scientific publishing. Traditionally, the ‘ordinary’ team of advisors to the negotiators (the Council for Negotiations, i.e., ‘forhandlingsrådet’) consisted of chief university librarians/University Library Directors. As such, the organizational setup was rigged to conduct the negotiations within the regime based on ordinary subscription agreements. However, entering into the new transformative agreements, an entirely different kind of organizing was established. The council and the government agencies that had the task of conducting negotiations with the publishers, the negotiation teams and council, were injected with university rectors representing the major research-intensive universities. In other words, policy development and implementation were directly embedding the institutional leadership level. The principles for the negotiations were codetermined by Universities Norway – the interest organization for Norwegian universities. This was an attempt to clarify the ambiguity of government policy. The process of negotiations became the practical link between the national and institutional levels. In practice, the university level of the four oldest universities became the bridge between policy and practice as well as the main interpreter of Plan S locally. The university leadership of the two oldest comprehensive research universities was active in voicing strong arguments against Plan S as top-down government policy, especially regarding the speed and processes of Plan S.

University Responses to Open Access and Plan S – the Case of the University of Oslo

Attempts to deliberately change the scientific publishing regime are of consequence for a comprehensive and research-intensive university. As the leading research university in Norway (26,000 students and 7000 employees) with approximately 5000 to over 6000 journal articles every year published in international journals, the effect and reception of the government policy for OA was met with very mixed reactions. This is hardly a surprise, considering the diversity of publishing practices and norm sets that thrive in various parts of the university.

Still, practices associated with OA policy and strategies were no strangers at the University central level. The requirements for archiving accepted publications (pre-print versions) was a demand the University of Oslo established quite early on, years before Plan S. Given that the performance-based funding regime featured the research publications indicator, reporting scientific publishing was already institutionalized. Champions of the Open Science agenda were also found much more broadly and radically within the University of Oslo, and in the different arenas, both normative and practical research policy issues were discussed.

Diverse interests regarding Plan S were not only found within the university but also in the environment related to Universities Norway – where the institutional leadership of the University of Oslo was represented. This interest organization saw the whole ‘open’ agenda as a domain where the various units within Universities Norway, and not least the secretariat, could play a leading role. Conferences and working groups were established and tried to connect with the universities. Internally at the University of Oslo, most of the work had already been done in terms of having a repository and taking part in various efforts to discuss the future of OA. A major outcry, however, was prompted by the fairly sudden announcement by the government and RCN of the quantitative target of 100% OA publishing in the future (Carling et al. Reference Carling, Erdal, Harstad, Knutsen, Lappegård, Skardhammar and Østby2018). This triggered a major public discussion. As the government policy was seen as lacking legitimacy and no required analysis of possible consequences had been conducted by the Ministry for Higher Education and Research, critical voices grew stronger at the University of Oslo, and beyond. This debate engaged virtually the entire research community. Strong voices and positions were articulated, although the policy positions differed both between universities and between different private and public research organizations For example, the University of Tromsø’s pro-rector for research actively promoted the entire Open Science agenda, while opposition came from the Institute of Peace Research, from the Political Science Department, and the Department of Economics at the University of Oslo. The quality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of the policy were heavily criticized (Carling et al. Reference Carling, Erdal, Harstad, Knutsen, Lappegård, Skardhammar and Østby2018; see also Kamerlin et al. Reference Kamerlin, Allen, de Bruin, Derat and Urdal2021).

This polarization intensified during the autumn of 2018. The debate demonstrated the ambiguity of government policy goals, their feasibility, and the wishful thinking concerning what role such a small country could take, especially as the first mover. But the most impactful counterargument was the Government and the Research Council of Norway’s failure to pay attention to what this could do to the quality of research and the quality assurance system that had been institutionalized in the decades running up to the announcement of Plan S and the requirements issued by cOAlition S. The debate engaged ‘the lab floor’ and the regular professors opposing cOAlition S and Plan S. Hence, the discussions and attention to Open Access, which until then had been dominated by voices promoting OA policies (both within and outside the universities), were now challenged by strong spokespersons from within internationally leading research groups. Arguments launched by the latter group mainly reflected issues related to academic freedom (of where to publish), and the potential negative impact OA might have on scientific quality.

The strategy developed by the University of Oslo could be said to reflect both positions and was a tangible expression of how the university actively dealt with OA in a way that tried to match values, norms, and perspectives on the significance of scientific publishing. In this way the institutional response to Plan S embedded the identity of the university as a comprehensive research-intensive university, emphasizing the normative dimension as the main foundation of the OA strategy. As an illustration, the introduction to the strategy reads as follows (UiO 2023: 1):

In summary, the polarized debate and the stark and coercive measures that the Plan S implied were in this way filtered at the University level through regular decision-making procedures, as well as through appointing working groups with strong research leadership representation. The normative mismatch that had become so obvious in the, at times, rancorous public debate, was translated into ideas that matched core value sets within the university.

Eventually, the institutional rights retention policy that had been pushed at the international, European, and national levels, was also introduced and adopted by the University Board. A major impetus was the fact that other universities had introduced it, despite the uncertain implications of practising such a policy. However, this was a risk that the university was willing to take, not least due to the previous consultations with other Norwegian universities.

Overall, the road ahead and ways of translating internal policy into practice are not settled. The ambiguities of national policy remain, as do the unpredictable actions of the commercial players. Policy ambiguity could provide the universities with the opportunity to define acceptable and effective ways of proceeding towards OA and to avoid becoming the pawns of an OA game where other actors call the shots. Some initiatives have been taken by the University of Oslo in this respect. With the ambition to stimulate more high-quality diamond options, the FRITT initiative is one example, including 21 journals supported by the university, with a service to set up new journals.