On the Fast Track to Full Gold Open Access

Abstract: The world of scientific publishing is changing; the days of an old type of subscription-based earnings for publishers seem over, and we are entering a new era. It seems as if an ever-increasing number of journals from disparate publishers are going Gold, Open Access that is, yet have we rigorously ascertained the issue in its entirety, or are we touting the strengths and forgetting about constructive criticism and careful weighing of evidence? We will therefore present the current state of the art, in a compact review/bibliometrics style, of this more relevant than ever hot topic, including challenges and potential solutions that are most likely to be acceptable to all parties. Suggested solutions, as per the performed analysis, at least for the time being, represent an inclusive publishing environment where multiple publishing models are competing for a piece of the pie and thus inhibiting each other's flaws. The performed analysis also shows that there seems to be a link between trends in scientific publishing and tumultuous world events, which in turn has a special significance for the publishing environment in the current world stage -- implying that academy publishing has potentially now found itself at a tipping point of change.