Why Are Research Papers Behind Paywalls? How Academic Publishing Works

It surprises most people the first time they meet it: a study paid for by taxpayers, written by a university researcher, costs $30 or more to read. The reason lies in how academic journals have traditionally been funded.

How a paper gets published

A researcher writes up their work and submits it to a journal. An editor sends it to other researchers in the field, who review it and recommend changes. This is peer review. If the paper is accepted, the publisher typesets it, hosts it online and registers it so that it can be found and cited.

Two things about this process stand out. Authors are not paid for their articles, and peer reviewers are generally not paid for reviewing. The work is done as part of an academic job, usually funded by a university or a research grant.

Where the money comes from

Traditionally, journals earn their income from readers, not authors.

• Subscriptions. University libraries pay publishers for access, usually to large bundles of journals at once. This is by far the largest source of income.
• Single-article sales. People without a subscription are offered individual articles for a fee. Few are sold this way, but the price is what most readers outside universities see.

A handful of large commercial publishers account for roughly half of all research papers, which gives them a strong position when negotiating subscription prices with libraries.

Why publishers say it costs what it does

Publishers point to real costs: managing peer review, editing and typesetting, running the websites, archiving articles permanently and guarding against fraud. Critics reply that the most expensive inputs, the research and the reviewing, are provided free, and that online publishing has made distribution far cheaper than print ever was. Both points are true, and the argument between them has driven two decades of change.

The open-access alternative

Open access turns the model around so that readers pay nothing. The money has to come from somewhere else.

• Author fees. Many open-access journals charge an article processing charge, paid by the author's funder or university. Fees range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
• Institutional funding. Some journals charge neither readers nor authors and are supported by universities, societies or grants.
• Repository copies. Authors can often place a copy of a paywalled paper in a free repository, which costs readers and authors nothing.

Our guide to the kinds of open access explains each of these.

Why more papers are becoming free

Research funders increasingly insist on it. The US National Institutes of Health requires the papers it funds to be free in PubMed Central on publication. A White House policy issued in 2022 directs all US federal agencies to make the research they fund free to read without delay. In Europe, a group of funders behind an initiative called Plan S requires immediate open access, as does the main public research funder in the United Kingdom.

The result is that the share of new research that is free to read keeps rising, even though the older literature remains largely paywalled.

What this means for you

A paywall on the publisher's site does not mean the paper is unavailable. A free copy often exists elsewhere because of the rules above. Paste the DOI, link or title into the finder on our home page to check, and see our guide to reading research papers for free for the other legal routes.