OA and prestige: Where do we stand today?

For years, researchers made a trade-off when they decided to publish open access (OA). While their work gained greater visibility, they lost out on the “prestige” attached to more renowned, closed-access journals. But is this still the case in 2026, as the reputation and market share of OA publications continues to grow?

Join our panel of experts, representing publishers, institutions, and researchers, as they discuss the intersection of prestige and accessibility in today’s landscape.

Here’s what they’ll discuss:

• What initiatives by publishers and institutions have impacted the perception of OA?
• How can publishers convey journal quality, and how can researchers evaluate it?
• What does good publishing look like, regardless of publishing route?

Webinar summary

Our panelists tackled a question that’s followed open access for years: does publishing OA still cost you prestige? Each speaker shared their own view before opening up to a panel discussion and audience Q&A. The answer wasn’t one big debate. It was three different views of the same underlying problem.

Here’s what the panel’s discussion came down to:

1. Open access isn’t less prestigious anymore. Top-tier journals already publish open access. However, OA’s reputation problem traces back to the rise of mega journals in the 2000s, whose high-volume, pay-to-publish model made OA feel transactional to some researchers. The label stuck, even as top journals adopted open access too.
2. Prestige is shaped by research assessment, not the publishing model itself. As long as tenure and hiring committees lean on journal-level metrics as a stand-in for quality, openness won’t be rewarded on its own merits.
3. Preprints were the clearest point of alignment across all three roles, and a low-cost way to be open. This means posting your paper before formal peer review, for free. It’s common at some institutions, and required by some funders now. One real gap flagged by the panel: preprints rarely carry the data-sharing details found in final papers.
4. Funders can help redefine what counts as prestigious. Some now require preprints and open data as a funding condition. This pushes researchers toward open science, beyond just open access. Publication venue alone no longer decides career success.

The conversation ended on shared responsibility rather than blame. Publishers, institutions, and funders are all taking real steps to close the credibility gap around OA. Open access isn’t the challenge anymore. How we measure prestige is.