In developed countries, many institutions and labs have funding mechanisms or agreements to support open access (OA) publishing. However, challenges still exist beyond the financial aspect. For example:

• Lab-Level Inequality: Large, well-funded labs can publish regularly in OA journals, while smaller labs or individual researchers may still struggle, even in wealthy countries.
• Discipline Gaps: Some fields receive more OA support (e.g., biomedical sciences), while others (e.g., social sciences, veterinary sciences) may not benefit equally from institutional agreements.
• Administrative Burden: Applying for APC waivers, handling paperwork, or navigating institutional agreements often takes significant time from researchers.
• Career Impact: Early-career researchers in labs with limited OA support may find themselves disadvantaged compared to peers in bigger labs that can afford frequent OA publications.
• Collaborative Issues: In multi-country projects, researchers from developed countries often push for OA publishing, but collaborators from developing countries may face difficulties covering shared costs.

👉 Questions for discussion: