Open vs Paywalled Science in 2025

Key Takeaways

• Proxies map cross-border access reliably.
• Open access grew, paywalls receded.
• APC spending nearly tripled since 2019.
• Publishers increasingly treat openness strategically.
  

There has always been debate about the idea that scientific papers could be behind a paywall. Today, it’s still a topic of disagreement but from a different perspective. Research may or may not be free to access for readers, but how do researchers themselves measure the importance, value, and visibility of their work?

With the development of new technologies, especially after the advent of generative Artificial Intelligence, many don’t even feel the need to get an entire paper. Instead, they easily find parts of a research study that answer their questions or can be used in their own work. With the digital landscape being fundamentally changed, we take a closer look at research systems to understand what’s genuinely open, what remains gated, and where readers stand on this topic.

Using a proxy server to map cross-border availability

Before even talking about paywalls, the most important question is availability. Many platforms limit reader access based on region, and so do scientific portals. As a result, you might follow a link and find nothing on the page. Unlike gated content, this issue has become easier to bypass for tech-savvy users (and not only them), who use proxy server platforms to virtually change their IP address. By sending requests through servers in different countries, a research team can open the same DOI from many locations and record what changes, whether an abstract appears, if there’s a license badge, an access note, a link to a manuscript, or a purchase option. Doing this for hundreds of DOIs creates a timeline that shows the difference between one-off design quirks and consistent patterns.

This piece of technology has really made a huge difference in scientific content consumption. Let’s be real about this: science is, first of all, about equal opportunities, because there is probably no academic person who writes a paper for only a certain group of people. Maybe bloggers do, journalists as well — but not scientists.

So, proxy servers have opened up the doors of content availability across the globe. Today’s platforms are quite sophisticated and offer several types of proxies depending on users’ needs. Arguably, most researchers would stick to a regular proxy, but those who go beyond just browsing, let’s say, crawling websites, definitely explore the variety of options, from residential to rotating proxies.

I know, terms like crawling may seem pretty niche and reserved for tech people, but many scientists, especially those working in fields like IT and machine learning, actively use such technologies for experiments, data gathering, and more. So, proxies and similar solutions have successfully partnered with the academic world.

What the latest data say about open vs paywalled output

Big global studies show that free-to-read publishing keeps growing. Between 2013 and 2023, the share of articles, reviews, and conference papers available as gold open access went up from 11% to 38%. At the same time, subscription-only content dropped from 70% to 52%. More authors are also choosing gold open access when given the option, rising from 23% to 48% over that decade.

This growth adds up. The STM Association’s open access dashboard shows that gold open access passed one million articles in 2023. That’s why readers now often find the official, final version of an article as the free copy. The trend isn’t the same in every subject, but the overall direction is clear, and it’s changing how people discover, read, and reuse research around the world.

Source: STM Association, OA Dashboard 2024.

Follow the money and the momentum

Opening up access to academic papers is, first of all, a financial matter—and that’s quite definitive in 2025, when digital platforms rely more and more on the financial contributions of their users and audiences. To go deeper into the financial aspects of the topic, we can mention the recent work by Haustein and colleagues, which shows that global spending on article processing charges has almost tripled, from $910.3 million in 2019 to $2.538 billion in 2023.

With this being said, trends show that open-access models are often favored by large publishing companies. In fact, a leading publisher reported that half of its primary research articles were published openly and described this approach as part of a strategic mindset. Here’s what the company’s CEO said in that regard: “The 50% was for us really an important milestone.” Doesn’t this indicate that opening access to academic work for wider audiences is mostly about future growth? Yes, in the short run, it may not be very rewarding, but it’s definitely future-proof, especially considering the liberalization of digital content today.

It’s also useful to look at the global view. We reviewed a report by the U.S. Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, which, by the way, was published this year. What we learn is that different regions contribute to the shift toward open access to science. Most importantly, the power centers, so to speak, understand very well that such an approach can only help channel more funding toward open publishing services. And what do major publishers do? They follow.