2. Methods We studied the rate of publication of neuroscientists with affiliations based in Australia and Canada from 2010 to 2017 in four types of journal: non-compliant Elsevier journals with embargoes of >12 months, compliant subscription journals published by Elsevier with embargoes of ≤12 months, discipline-specific immediate open access journals, and OAMJs. We selected Elsevier journals from the list compiled by Gray (2018) based on embargo length. By manually scanning journal titles for words related to neuroscience, psychology, or neurological or psychological disorders, we identified 30 journals with non-compliant embargo periods of 18–24 months. For comparison, we also identified 58 journals with compliant 12-month embargo periods. We selected only journals that had the same embargo period for the entire 2013–2017 period as recorded by Gray (2018) and published neuroscience and psychology papers in English. To select discipline-specific immediate open access journals, we searched the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) for journals with subject areas of neurosciences, biological psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, or psychology. We selected only journals (n=20) that publish in English, had the DOAJ seal, had been listed on the DOAJ since before 2010, and had been indexed by Scopus prior to 2010. We called these journals immediate open access because the term ‘gold open access’ is sometimes conflated with the article processing charge business model (Beall, 2013) and some open access advocates distinguish between ‘gold’ and fee-free ‘platinum’ journals (Björk, 2017). They were published by Frontiers (n=11), Springer (n=3 under BMC and n=1 under the Springer brand), Hindawi (n=3), and PAGEPress (n=1). We also examined neuroscience publications across OAMJs (n=8). While PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports are the best known OAMJs, we also counted contributions from the much younger and/or smaller OAMJs PeerJ, Royal Society Open Science, Heliyon, BMJ Open, Biology Open, and FEBS Open Bio. Although several of these journals began after 2010, we did not apply exclusion criteria to this subset of journals because the OAMJ segment of publishing has experienced rapid shifts, particularly with respect to the rapid popularity of Scientific Reports. 2.1. Scopus Searches We used Elsevier’s Scopus database because it is a widely used and authoritative bibliometric database and would likely have accurate metadata for Elsevier journals. In mid-2018, we conducted searches (Table 1) for the total number of publications from Australia, Canada, the United States (US), and United Kingdom (UK) in a particular journal using the journal’s ISSN and used the results analysis tool to export total publications per country per year for 2010–2017. We also conducted searches for publications that explicitly acknowledged either Australian funders who support neuroscience (ARC and NHMRC) or Canadian funders who support neuroscience (CIHR and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council [NSERC]). In both search types, we excluded articles in press because these would have a final publication date of 2018 or later. For comparison with the Australian and Canadian data, we also obtained national publication counts for the US and UK. For OAMJs, we identified ‘neuroscience’ publications if the word ‘neuroscience’ occurred anywhere in the article’s metadata. Category Example String Journal total (ISSN(0166–4328) AND (EXCLUDE (DOCTYPE,”ip”))) Funder acknowledgement (ISSN(0166–4328) AND (FUND-ALL(National Health and Medical Research Council) OR FUND-ALL(NHMRC)OR FUND-ALL(Australian Research Council)OR FUND-ALL(ARC))) AND (LIMIT-TO (AFFILCOUNTRY,”Australia”)) AND (EXCLUDE (DOCTYPE, “ip”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2017) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2016) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2015) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2014) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2013) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2012) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2011) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2010)) OAMJ total (ALL (neuroscience) AND ISSN (1932–6203) AND (EXCLUDE (DOCTYPE, “ip”)) OAMJ funder acknowledgement (ALL (neuroscience) AND ISSN(1932–6203) AND (FUND-ALL(Canadian Institutes of Health Research)OR FUND-ALL(CIHR)OR FUND-ALL(Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council)OR FUND-ALL(NSERC))) AND (LIMIT-TO (AFFILCOUNTRY, “Canada”)) AND (EXCLUDE (DOCTYPE, “ip”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2017) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2016) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2015) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2014) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2013) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2012 ) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2011) OR LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2010)) 2.2. Statistical Analysis and Material Availability Journal-specific totals were collated and summed to provide national totals or funder-acknowledging totals. The national totals and funder-acknowledging totals were analysed using the free open source statistics package JASP (JASP Team, 2018). Variables encoding for the existence of combined NHMRC/ARC open access policies (AU-policy) from 2013 onwards and tri-agency policy (CA-policy) from 2015 onwards were included in the data. Step-wise regression analysis was then performed with year, AU-policy, and CA-policy as independent variables and the number of publications as a dependent variable. The full list of journal titles, underlying data, and statistical analysis results are available on Figshare (Khoo & Lay, 2018).

3. Results 3.1. Non-Compliant Journal Publishing Scopus data shows that there are potentially hundreds of papers published each year in Elsevier journals with non-compliant self-archiving embargoes (n=30). As shown in Figure 1a, the national totals were higher than the funder-acknowledging totals but neither the introduction of the NHMRC and ARC’s open access policies (shown by the dashed blue line before 2013), nor the tri-agency open access policy in Canada in 2015 (shown by the black dashed line) had any effect on reducing Australian or Canadian neuroscientists’ rate of publication in non-compliant Elsevier journals. Stepwise linear regression produced a model (R2=0.945, F(1,6)=103.2, p<0.001) for the Australian national total with only the year as a predictor (β=24.98, p<0.001). Paradoxically, the regression model for funder-acknowledging totals (R2=0.871, F(1,6)=40.47, p<0.001) included the Australian open access policy as a predictor, but with a positive coefficient (β=47, p<0.001). Stepwise linear regression found no significant predictors for the Canadian national total or funder-acknowledging totals. Similarly, there was no decrease in publishing in non-compliant journals in the US or UK (Figure 1b) because there were no significant predictors in either case. 3.2. Compliant Subscription Journals Elsevier publishes many subscription journals with compliant self-archiving embargoes. We identified 58 journals within the fields of neuroscience and psychology. As shown in Figure 2a there appears to be little to no effect of funder open access policy on the rate at which authors publish in compliant subscription journals. The blue dashed line again represents the Australian policies implemented from 2013 and the black line represents Canada’s tri-agency policy in effect from 2015. Stepwise linear regression produced a model (R2=0.878, F(1,6)=43.34, p<0.001) for the Australian national total with only the Australian policy as a predictor (β=143.4, p<0.001). However, when applied to papers that acknowledged Australian funders there was no significant regression equation. For Canadian neuroscience, a significant regression model was found for the national total (R2=0.861, F(1,6)=37.16, p<0.001) with year as the only predictor (β=24.31, p<0.001). Again, there was no significant regression equation for papers that acknowledged Canadian funders. As shown in Figure 2b, the US had high output throughout 2010–2017. There was no significant regression equation for the US national total in compliant subscription journals. For the UK, a significant regression equation was found (R2=0.894, F(1,6)=50.53, p<0.001) with year as the only predictor (β=37.5, p<0.001). 3.3. Immediate Open Access Journals It is possible that funder open access policies are generally driving uptake of open access publishing opportunities, so we also examined open access neuroscience journals. Since Elsevier does not publish a comparable number of fully open access journals, we examined 20 journals with the DOAJ Seal that publish neuroscience papers. We found that immediate open access outputs were increasing for both Australia and Canada (Figure 3a) and the US and UK (Figure 3b). However, the existence of Australian funder policy (blue dashed line) or Canadian funder policy (black dashed line) had little effect. Stepwise linear regression produced a model (R2=0.932, F(1,6)=82.89, p<0.001) for the Australian national total with the Australian policy as a predictor of increased output (β=86.4, p<0.001). For papers that acknowledge Australian funders, the regression equation (R2=0.691, F(1,6)=13.4, p=0.011) only included year as a predictor (β=6.071, p=0.011). Regression equations for Canadian national totals (R2=0.81, F(1,6)=25.59, p=0.002) and funder acknowledgements (R2=0.823, F(1,6)=27.93, p=0.002) both included year as the only predictor (β=22.8 and 9.524, respectively, p=0.002). For the US national total, stepwise linear regression produced a significant model (R2=0.734, F(1,6)=16.54, p=0.007) with year as its only predictor (β=89.14, p=0.007). For the UK, the regression equation (R2=0.768, F(1,6)=19.86, p=0.004) had the existence of the Australian funder policy (which coincided with the 2013 revised RCUK policy) as its only predictor (β=109.9, p=0.004). 3.4. Open Access Mega-Journals Many neuroscientists publish articles in OAMJs, which are large interdisciplinary journals that use peer review to screen predominantly for scientific or technical soundness (Björk & Catani, 2016; Wakeling et al., 2017). We searched for neuroscience articles published in 8 OAMJs and found that neuroscience outputs in OAMJs were increasing in every jurisdiction (Figure 4). Stepwise linear regression produced a model (R2=0.871, F(1,6)=40.56, p<0.001) for the Australian national total with year as a predictor of increased output (β=86.4, p<0.001). However, for papers that acknowledge Australian funders, the regression equation (R2=0.961, F(1,6)=62.29, p<0.001) included both year (β=10.67, p=0.031) and the Australian policy (β=55.27, p=0.023) as predictors. Regression equations for Canadian national totals (R2=0.926, F(1,6)=31.08, p=0.002) found the year (β=78, p=0.001) as a positive predictor, but that the implementation of the Canadian policy was negatively associated with Canadian neuroscience OAMJ publications (β=−168.5, p=0.033). For Canadian funder acknowledgements (R2=0.845, F(1,6)=32.74, p=0.001), the implementation of the Australian policy appeared to be a predictor of more OAMJ publications (β=109.6, p=0.001). For the US national total, stepwise linear regression produced a significant model (R2=0.702, F(1,6)=14.17, p=0.009) with year as its only predictor (β=217.1, p=0.009). Similarly, the regression equation for the UK national total (R2=0.942, F(1,6)=97.19, p<0.001) had year as its only predictor (β=118.7, p<0.004).