This study diachronically investigates the trend of the “open access” in the Web of Science (WoS) category of “communication.” To evaluate the trend, data were collected from 184 categories of WoS from 1980 to 2017. A total of 87,997,893 documents were obtained, of which 95,304 (0.10%) were in the category of “communication.” In average, 4.24% of the documents in all 184 categories were open access. While in communication, it was 3.29%, which ranked communication 116 out of 184. An Open Access Index (OAI) was developed to predict the trend of open access in communication. Based on the OAI, communication needs 77 years to fully reach open access, which undeniably can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” in this field. Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for “open access” by communication scholars across the world. Future research should investigate whether the current business models of publications in communication scholarships are encouraging open access or pose unnecessary restrictions on knowledge development.

Introduction From the beginning of this century, the traditional model of science communication has undergone profound changes, especially after Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in January 2002. The BOAI, often seen as the origin of the Open Access (OA) movement (Wenzler, 2017), set out the principles, strategies, rules, and commitments related to OA to research literature (Miguel, de Oliveira, & Gracio, 2016). Some scholars believe that the BOAI and other similar initiatives, such as Berlin (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2003) and Bethesda (Earlham College, 2003), were a result of “crisis in scientific publishing.” Such a crisis occurs as a consequence of high prices for subscriptions, reduction of libraries’ budgets, and other restrictions on access to scientific publications for the scientific community (Miguel et al., 2016). Recently produced science and knowledge should be accessible to all citizens equally, particularly when considering “Free Access” at the core of OA movement and related initiatives. In fact, OA publications should pose no barrier to a reader other than having access to the Internet (Forrester, 2015). OA does not mean just being free to download. According to Sahu (2005), OA means free availability on the public Internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the Internet itself. The only acceptable conditions that should be considered within the framework of OA is giving authors both control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited (Miguel et al., 2016). Since 2002, the OA movement, especially with the introduction of gold, green, and hybrid roads (Rizor & Holley, 2014), has become a new trend in scholarly outputs. Some journals in different fields of study started shifting toward seeing OA as an advantage; nevertheless, the volume of OA documents available is still low. Many journals are displeased with this movement, to the extent that the percentage of OA documents in journals included in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus is barely 23% on the two gold and green roads (Björk, Laakso, Welling, & Paetau, 2014). This study is dedicated to, first, find the volume of “open access” documents in the WoS categories in general and, second, investigate the directions and trends of OA within the study field of “communication.” “Communication” was selected as the specific category due to its rich and old history of intensive debates on the issue of “Open and Free Access,” which by default put “communication” scientific productions as top priority that “Must and Should” be OA.

The Debate Over “Free Access” in Communication The recent movement for OA and other related initiatives are not completely new in communication scholarship. The two basic issues of “free flow of information” and “free access to information and knowledge” have been discussion topics for many decades in “communication,” and repetitiously emphasized in several universal constitutions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Right and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) related documents (Ghanbari Baghestan & Hassan, 2009). In this regard, three major phases can be highlighted, wherein all the issues of “free access to information and knowledge” are at the core. First, the “free flow of information” was the subject of intense debates at both national and international forums beginning in the early 1940s. In 1948, the United Nation General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Right, of which Article 19 explicitly recognized free expression as a fundamental human right. This right, among others, includes the freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers (Cate, 1989). As it is also highlighted in First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, this Article not only recognizes the free flow of information, but goes further to guarantee reception of the information. The meaning of this extension is very significant to communication as a field (Cate, 1989). Second, in the early 1960s, UNESCO becomes the forum for debate on this issue. The MacBride Commission is one of the groups assigned the awesome task of studying the totality of this issue in modern societies (Raube-Wilson, 1986). It is worth highlighting that the McBride report addresses multiple matters, among them “democratization of communication,” insisting on removal of all communication obstacles. Although, due to consequence of the free flow of information, the world was divided both along an East-West and North-South axis, UNESCO managed to take initiatives that continue to characterize it today. Third, with the rise of Internet in the later decades of the last century, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) passed a resolution in 1998 proposing the idea of a World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), under the auspice of the United Nations. The WSIS was held in Geneva in 2003 (first phase) and in Tunis in 2005 (second phase), and presented the Geneva Declaration of Principles (ITU, 2003a), Geneva Plan of Action (ITU, 2003b), the Tunis Commitment (ITU, 2005b), and the Tunis Agenda (ITU, 2005a) for governance of the Internet and the flow of information and knowledge, respectively. The Geneva Declaration of Principles in 2003 is one of the major outcomes of the WSIS summit merit, with special attention on the provision of access to information and knowledge for the whole population (Weber, 2010). Considering the above background and history, it was highly expected that “communication,” as a field and because of its nature, will lead the OA movement and related initiatives, particularly in the world of scientific productions. However, after more than eight decades of intense debates regarding “Free Access,” five decades indexing scientific journals (Garfield, 1964), and 15 years of OA Movement, it is of importance to evaluate the volume of OA in “communication” itself to find whether there is a “crisis” in access to the scientific publications (Miguel et al., 2016) in this field. In other words, in the context of realizing greater OA to communication scholarly literatures, how much progress has been achieved in the field of communication scholarship? Is it acceptable or not?

Conclusion Much is left to be desired in OA communication development. Although the “communication” scholarly outputs consist of a very small portion of the total outputs in all 184 categories in WoS, its degree of “accessibility” is much less than average, ranked at 116 of 184. This rank, doubtless, is not acceptable for communication as field. Considering the huge history of debates and efforts being made to protect the right of “free accessibility” to information and knowledge in this field, as well as BOAI recent movements for “accessibility” of scholarly outputs, no reason can be found to justify such result and rank. When it comes to prediction of the future trend, surprisingly, the proposed equation for OAI shows that with the current trend in communication, it will take 77 years until “communication,” as a field of study, can reach the goal of being fully OA. Again, undeniably, it can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” as mentioned by Miguel et al. (2016). Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for “open access” by communication scholars across the world. Even prior to this, there should be further investigation on the epistemological and ontological aspect of such trends to find a solution to accelerate the “open access” movement in communication. Further research also might focus on the current “business models” of publishing in this area. It is important to evaluate whether the current business models of publishing are really encouraging “Open Access” or pose unnecessary restrictions (due to publication fees/subscription fees) on knowledge development and participation of some segments of the world’s class scholars, like those in developing and less developed countries.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. ORCID iD

Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9530-1727