 | Kathryn Phillips Professor of Health Economics - University of California San Francisco |
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03.07.2025-29.07.2025
Achieving Global & Equitable Open Science: Open Access Publication that is Equitable, Financially Feasible, and Facilitates High-Quality Science
My objective is to develop innovative solutions addressing the key challenge facing OA – how it can be equitable while also achieving sustainable business models and high-quality science. My project focuses on two principal challenges that have been identified as requiring new solutions: (1) reliance on author-paid article processing charges as the core of a sustainable business model, and (2) perceived lack of quality of articles published by OA journals.
The challenges of achieving global, equitable OA have been debated, but solutions are lacking – a gap that my work will address.
(1) Many academic publishers are still wedded to a centuries-old business model of paid journal subscriptions, but this has produced inequities and is no longer viable in an internet world.
(2) Proponents of OA have not been able to integrate the realities that (a) publishers must have sustainable business models given publication costs, and (b) researchers must publish in high-quality journals to have their science widely disseminated and impactful.
(3) Solutions are being discussed within silos rather than across key stakeholders. Most of the efforts to date have been driven by OA proponents, but it's time to engage researchers, editors, and users of research. In addition, the focus has been on basic and discovery research with less attention paid to multidisciplinary, social science research that directly impacts health outcomes. Lastly, there has been little attention on using AI and other technologies to make OA publication more efficient.
Kathryn’s work focuses on generating and translating evidence for policy decision-making, examining how to effectively and equitably implement new technologies. She has published ~200 articles in major journals (e.g., JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs); has led National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants as Principal Investigator continuously for over 30 years; has served on the editorial boards for leading journals (Health Affairs, Value in Health; JAMA Internal Medicine); and has been a member of several National Academies of Medicine committees. She has advised/served with a range of national and international organizations, including the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, Genome Canada, and US government agencies (FDA, CDC, AHRQ, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy). She conducts global research with the Global Economics and Evaluation of Clinical Sequencing Working Group (Chair, 2017-2024). For several years, she has been among the top 2% of authors for career-long citations in her field (Ioannidis, 2024). Her work has been quoted by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNBC, Reuters, Newsweek, and other major news outlets. Kathryn has degrees from the University of Texas-Austin, Harvard, and the University of California-Berkeley.
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