Unlocking innovation: the value of Open Access in scientific publications

Note: “We” and “our” in the text below refer to Pfizer’s Publication Management Team

Barriers to knowledge transfer affect both patients and physicians: decisions might be made based on incomplete information which could result in poorer health outcomes. In recent times, the COVID-19 pandemic provided the clearest illustration of the need to have timely access to crucial medical findings (refs: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back — The Pandemic’s Impact on Open Access Progress and Open access in the age of a pandemic). Could open access publishing in biomedical research play a role in overcoming barriers by providing accessibility to published advances in research? 

Studies and review articles (refs: Patients at the Heart of the Scientific Dialogue: An Industry Perspective and Defining patient centricity with patients for patients and caregivers: a collaborative endeavour) that emphasize the importance of patient-centricity in healthcare have underscored the importance of education and information, co-creation, access, and transparency in medical research. These studies found that patient-centricity is closely aligned with open access (OA) publishing, especially in industry-sponsored research. This alignment has the potential to foster public trust (see also UNESCO press release UNESCO sets ambitious international standards for open science). Paywalls may prove life-threatening for patients, when healthcare professionals (HCPs), physicians, and researchers—especially in countries where exchange rates make accessing peer-reviewed articles prohibitively expensive— lack access to the latest information; OA publishing can ensure that they can stay informed. OA is fundamental to medical research publishing because it removes the financial barriers faced by patients, HCPs, physicians, and other readers. This allows them to better inform their patients and plan for what is to come. Publishing OA also enhances transparency, committing to making research available to anyone—including reuse, in accordance with the Creative Commons license—encouraging trust in industry-sponsored research.

Insights from Pfizer’s Publications Management Team

For deeper insights into the role OA can play in achieving equity and transparency while ensuring timely access to industry-sponsored medical research, we (the Pfizer’s Publications Management Team) put together a report titled Achieving Equity and Transparency by Advancing Accessibility to Medical Research Through Open Access Publishing. Understanding the attention and reach of OA publishing is crucial for publication planning. Measuring how OA publishing drives greater access to study results for healthcare providers and patients alike is an important indicator of achieving equity. 

The analysis in the report focused on Pfizer-sponsored clinical trials and literature reviews published from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2019: a total of 2581 manuscripts. Of these, 2347 had digital object identifiers (DOIs) and were input into Altmetric Explorer to track online attention, including mentions on Facebook. The Facebook data were segmented into subsets for patient advocacy and education. 

Although this data pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a period of greater transparency in research (ref: Open access in the age of a pandemic), it shows that OA publications were gaining increasing attention among patient advocacy groups even before the pandemic (see Fig. 1). Notably in 2022, the White House issued a mandate for federally funded research to be freely available based on lessons from the pandemic and the Gates Foundation has issued a similar position to begin in 2025. Philosophically, this practice should extend to all research for greater accessibility. These mandates emphasize the growing focus on the value of OA publishing which is what we set out to explore in our analysis.

The findings, originally presented at the 16th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) in 2020, reveal a consistent increase in Pfizer’s OA publications since 2014. This trend is in line with Pfizer’s commitment to OA publishing. The proportion of gold OA licenses, including full and hybrid journals, more than doubled over this period, with 60% of Pfizer-sponsored publications in 2019 being published as gold OA. Overall, the percentage of OA publications increased from 53% in 2014 to 69% in 2019. We continue to see a positive trend in OA publishing adoption across Pfizer. As of May 2024, Pfizer achieved 97% OA publishing for the year, and these metrics are shared as part of an ongoing practice with our scientific publication committees.

Altmetric and Dimensions data are fundamental to the assessment of our publications’ performance, whether OA or closed.  What the data show is that articles published OA are read more often, are remarked upon more often (e.g., social media), and contribute more often to policy (http://openaccess.nl and The open access effect in social media exposure of scholarly articles: A matched-pair analysis).  We highlight the performance of these publications to our colleagues and authors, calling out this greater performance in reaching more readers and urging them to continue to publish OA for each and every article.  Simply comparing Altmetric scores (and their breakdowns) for closed and open articles is informative of the benefits of OA publishing. 

Figure 1: Using Facebook mentions data obtained from Altmetric as a measure of online attention and citations of open access and non-open access Pfizer-sponsored publications, the authors found that among Facebook mentions by patient advocacy groups in 2019, 69% of posts referenced open access publications, which demonstrates the value of open access in reaching key stakeholders. (Source: Achieving Equity and Transparency by Advancing Accessibility to Medical Research Through Open Access Publishing) 

Barriers to OA

Industry-sponsored research does not often receive the same OA opportunities as academic and government-funded studies. Studies have revealed disparities in the availability of OA publishing options across different types of funders, including industry, government, and academic sectors. For example, publications stemming from industry-funded research were not always offered Creative Commons CC BY license. In addition, some leading journals impose embargo periods, hindering the timely dissemination of medical information to patients and healthcare professionals who cannot afford subscriptions. Despite studies reporting the advantages of publishing in OA journals, authors continue to rely on journal impact factor to drive their choices, resulting in a bias towards journals that may not consistently provide fair open access options. 

Faced with barriers in OA publishing options, we are creating a Green OA repository like those in academia. This repository provides us with the opportunity to have our peer-reviewed research available to anyone without the constraints from publishers.

Resources for overcoming the barriers

While the primary objectives of publishing scientific research remain timely dissemination and peer-reviewed validation, raising awareness among authors about the impact of OA publishing on patients and others makes a compelling case to consider other journal attributes. Attributes such as journal acceptance rates and time from submission-to-publication can reduce resubmissions and ensure timely dissemination of data, while measures of online attention and scholarly citations can maximize reach and impact. To this end, we provide our colleagues and external authors comprehensive resource materials, including journal selection resources, open access publishing primers, and fact sheets, equipping authors with the tools and knowledge necessary to navigate the complex scholarly publishing landscape. 

We encourage authors to examine journal options that include OA publishing, plain language summaries or enhanced publication content, as well as reviewing online engagement via Altmetric scores. Other educational materials include a Frequently Asked Questions document and a top 10 publications by Altmetric score infographic of Pfizer-sponsored publications available via open access publishing.

We are a member of Open Pharma, an organization that advocates for greater Open Science options for pharma-funded research. Through Open Pharma collaboration, we have raised to publishers the obstacles we face when trying to make our publications openly available. We have also commissioned research that clearly demonstrates the greater performance of OA publishing. We continue to educate publishers, researchers, and readers about the benefits of embracing OA. Additionally, we are developing a process for seeking a publisher’s green OA permissions through Sherpa Juliet and evaluating how to maintain the Green OA repository.

Figure 2: The top 5 research outputs based on the Altmetric Attention scores. Annually, Pfizer produces an infographic of the top 20 Pfizer-sponsored publications based on Altmetric score. The infographic includes whether or not the publication is available via open access. In 2021, 18 of the top 20 publications were available via open access. With the Altmetric score serving as a surrogate for public engagement, this is evidence we are heading in the right direction in our ambitions. In the above: Tucatinib versus placebo added to trastuzumab and capecitabine…, Pharmacological Inhibition of CETP (Cholesteryl Ester Transfer Protein) Increases HDL…, Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron pseudovirus by BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited human sera, Effectiveness and Safety of Apixaban versus Warfarin…, and Concise syntheses of GB22, GB13,… are all available via open access.

OA publishing is not just about unlocking accessibility; it is about democratizing knowledge and driving positive change in healthcare. It benefits everyone if study sponsors publish their clinical research articles in OA journals: it accelerates research, builds trust through transparency, and delivers vital information to patients and healthcare professionals, who might be blocked by paywalls, for better decision making. Most importantly, it connects patients to information enabling them to make informed decisions about their health.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to J.R. Meloro and Sandy Kim (Pfizer) for comments, edits, and review.