Editing Open access (section)

== Inequality and open access ==
=== Gender inequality ===
Gender inequality favoring men can be found in many disciplines, including political science, economics and neurology, and critical care research.<ref name=":18" /> For instance, in critical care research, 30.8% of the 18,483 research articles published between 2008 and 2018 were led by female authors and were more likely to be published in lower-impact journals than those led by male authors.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Vranas |first1=Kelly C. |last2=Ouyang |first2=David |last3=Lin |first3=Amber L. |last4=Slatore |first4=Christopher G. |last5=Sullivan |first5=Donald R. |last6=Kerlin |first6=Meeta Prasad |last7=Liu |first7=Kathleen D. |last8=Baron |first8=Rebecca M. |last9=Calfee |first9=Carolyn S. |last10=Ware |first10=Lorraine B. |last11=Halpern |first11=Scott D. |last12=Matthay |first12=Michael A. |last13=Herridge |first13=Margaret S. |last14=Mehta |first14=Sangeeta |last15=Rogers |first15=Angela J. |date=2020-04-01 |title=Gender Differences in Authorship of Critical Care Literature |journal=American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine |volume=201 |issue=7 |pages=840–847 |doi=10.1164/rccm.201910-1957OC |issn=1073-449X |pmc=7124723 |pmid=31968182}}</ref> Open access publishing may improve the visibility of female researchers both inside and outside academia, but without deliberate support of female researchers, open access publishing may exacerbate gender inequality.<ref name=":18">{{cite journal |author1=Gemma Derrick |author2= Alesia Ann Zuccala  |author3= Georgiana Turculet |title=Open Access Publishing Probabilities Based on Gender and Authorship Structures in Vietnam |date=5 October 2021 |volume=9 |doi=10.3390/publications9040045 |journal=Publications|issue= 4 |page= 45 |doi-access= free }}</ref>

=== High-income–low-income country inequality ===
A 2022 study has found "most OA articles were written by authors in high-income countries, and there were no articles in Mirror journals by authors in low-income countries."<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Smith|first1=Audrey C.|last2=Merz|first2=Leandra|last3=Borden|first3=Jesse B.|last4=Gulick|first4=Chris K.|last5=Kshirsagar|first5=Akhil R.|last6=Bruna|first6=Emilio M.|date=2022-02-04|title=Assessing the effect of article processing charges on the geographic diversity of authors using Elsevier's "Mirror Journal" system|journal=Quantitative Science Studies|volume=2|issue=4|pages=1123–1143|doi=10.1162/qss_a_00157|s2cid=244600816|issn=2641-3337|doi-access=free}}</ref> "One of the great ironies of open access is that you grant authors around the world the ability to finally read the scientific literature that was completely closed off to them, but it ends up excluding them from publishing in the same journals" says Emilio Bruna, a scholar at the [[University of Florida]] in Gainesville.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kwon|first=Diana|date=2022-02-16|title=Open-access publishing fees deter researchers in the global south|url=https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00342-w|journal=Nature|language=en|doi=10.1038/d41586-022-00342-w|pmid=35177842|s2cid=246943816}}</ref>