Open Access Publishing: A New Era in Scholarly Communication

The Open Access Publishing Conference started with a word by Kim Fontaine-Skronski, IPSA Executive Director and Master of ceremony, who welcomed members of IPSA’s Executive Committee, speakers, participants and guests. Dr. Fontaine-Skronski thanked the Selection Committee members as well as the partners and sponsors who contributed to the organization of the event, in particular, the conference’s main partners: Concordia University, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the American Political Science Association (APSA). 

Dr. Fontaine-Skronski then introduced Graham Carr, President and Vice-Chancellor of Concordia University. Prof. Carr talked about the long-standing relationship between Concordia and IPSA, which spans 16 years, and listed the several major joint events organized by both institutions, including the UN at 75 Conference and the IPSA-Concordia Summer School in Applied Diplomacy. Prof. Carr also talked about Concordia’s involvement in Open Science. 

In her welcome address, IPSA President Dianne Pinderhughes highlighted IPSA’s historic mission to advance political science in all parts of the world. Dr. Pinderhughes thanked the organizing committee and, specifically, Prof. Elizabeth Bloodgood, Chair of the Political Science Department at Concordia University, for their support in organizing this conference and for more than 16 years of fruitful collaborations.

Marianne Kneuer and Graham Carr and Dianne Pinderhughes at the Open Access Publishing Conference.

The welcome address was followed by Geoffrey Boulton’s keynote speech, Scientific Communication: The Need for Reform. Prof. Boulton, Chair of the Project on the Future of Scientific Publishing, International Science Council (ISC), explained that there had been a growing concern amongst ISC members about the state of scientific publishing, therefore, ISC created a group to analyze the current state of publishing. He noted that globally efficient and prompt dissemination of the findings of science is a public concern, and a globally efficient publishing process is the prerequisite for a globally inclusive open science. Therefore, we need universal, prompt open access to the record of science, both for authors and readers, with no barriers to participation.

Prof. Boulton recommended “preprints servers” as a potential solution to answer the needs of scientific publishing. In this system, publications are deposited on specialized servers before peer review as a means of reducing the cost and maintaining the speed of scientific communication. Preprint servers have played an essential role in the COVID-19 emergency and were accessed by authors either freely or at cost, typically about 10% of the prices charged to authors by conventional scientific journals.

The first panel of the Open Access Publishing Conference was chaired by Theresa Reidy, co-editor of the International Political Science Review (IPSR). Dr. Reidy is a senior lecturer and head of the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork.

Marijke Breuning’s (University of North Texas, United States) presentation, Open Access: Benefits and Pitfalls for Scholars, discussed the impact of transitioning to OA publishing models on scholars as producers of articles for academic journals. More specifically, her work examines whether research funding, gender, institutional affiliation, and the European or US origin of the journal affect the likelihood that an article is published in an OA format. Dr. Breuning’s research confirms that there is a relationship between funding, co-authorship, and the ability to publish OA in well-respected political science journals.

In his presentation, Didier Torny (French National Centre for Scientific Research, France) focused on “transformative agreements” between library consortia and publishers, including subscription services and OA publishing in academic journals. Dr. Torny’s research, Unboxing Transformative Agreements. A Systematic Study of Contracts between European Consortiums and Academic Journal Publishers (2015-2020), analyzed 173 transformative agreements and revealed that they do not, in themselves, guarantee a transformation of the journal publishing model in favour of full OA.

The next speaker was Christopher Barnes (Adelphi University, United States). In his presentation, entitled The Role of Libraries in Supporting OA Publishing without Author Fees, Dr. Barnes pointed out that academic libraries have been moving from being providers of information about OA publishing to being the publishers themselves. He also offered that by publishing journals that do not require authors to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs), these OA publishers continue to provide high-quality venues for scholars without funding to share research that is relevant to their own countries and communities.

In his presentation Closing Equity Gaps in Political Science, Jesse Cragwall (Pellissippi State Community College, United States) focused on the user perspective and open educational resources and textbooks. Prof. Cragwall’s survey analyzed students’ preferences for online vs. traditional textbooks. His research reveals that students find online textbooks more reliable, accessible, convenient and low-priced.

The second panel of the Open Access Publishing Conference was chaired by Joe Deville (Lancaster University, United Kingdom). In his introduction, Dr. Deville talked about the importance of OA publishing, not only because it makes scholarship more open but also because it increases readership. He suggested that traditional sales are dropping because the traditional publishing model is broken. His presentation explored new models for funding book publishing. Dr. Deville described different projects that aim to support models that are not reliant on Book Processing Charges (BPCs) and that generate new revenue streams for OA publishers, among others. 

In his presentation THOTH: Open Infrastructure Sustaining Biodiversity, Dr. Rupert Gatti talked about the metadata associated with books and how keeping it accurate and well-structured is a great challenge. Open Book Publishers (OBP), a scholar-led OA publisher, provides ebooks to over 25 retail and distribution platforms, each requiring a different subset of metadata in different formats. OBP uses THOTH, an open metadata management and dissemination system, in its everyday metadata management. THOTH aims to make metadata for OA titles available for everyone. 

The last speaker was Miranda Barnes, Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM), United Kingdom. According to Dr. Barnes, small and scholar-led presses are important, but they lack staff, financial and technological resources. This represents a potential loss of contribution to knowledge. OA is a real opportunity because it can draw together academics, publishers, and libraries under the same umbrella. The COPIM project’s longer-term goal is to develop a network of university repositories that would be willing to receive and archive OA monographs.

The first roundtable discussion was chaired by Jon Gurstelle, the American Political Science Association’s Publishing Director.  

Claire Redhead from the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) proposed that OA is as good as any other form of publishing. However, publishing is costly and there lies the challenge. Ms. Redhead mentioned that there are different diamond models in Open Access Publishing, but most rely on volunteers. The people involved in putting it together, and the technology used, have to be funded for the OA model to work.

The next speaker was Giliberto Capano (University of Bologna), who talked about the diversity of actors who are concerned about the transition to OA. According to Prof. Capano, one of the biggest challenges is financial resources. Twenty-five percent of the Italian Political Science Associations’ annual income comes from royalties. He pointed out that professional associations must look into diversifying their income sources to answer this problem.  

International Political Science Review (IPSR) co-editor, Theresa Reidy, talked about how transformative agreements completely morphed the OA environment. OA presents advantages but also pitfalls, specifically from a financial standpoint. Dr. Reidy expects 50 to 60% of IPSR’s publications to be OA by next year. As a former editor of the Irish Political Studies (IPS) journal, Dr. Reidy noticed that larger journals have more weight in shaping the negotiations. 

The last speaker of the panel was Julieta Mortati, Manager of Latin America Research Commons (LARC), the first open access publishing press dedicated to the publication of books written in Spanish or Portuguese. Originating and supported by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the largest professional association in the world for individuals and institutions engaged in studying Latin America, LARC was established in 2017. Ms. Mortati talked about OA’s impact on the dissemination of Latin American research and publications.

The first day concluded with a cocktail reception at Concordia University’s Political Science Department. Several special guests attended the reception, including the Consul General of Argentina, Min. Gerardo E. Bompadre, representatives of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Canada Office, and Montreal International, as well as IPSA Executive Committee members and conference participants. 

During the reception, Dr. Fontaine-Skronski announced two main projects. The first one is IPSA’s Open Access Publishing Survey which will be coordinated by Executive Committee member and Chair of the Publications Committee, Dr. Emilia Palonen. The survey will be launched in early 2023 to gain insights into how national political science associations, that are members of IPSA, deal with the transformations brought on by the Open Access model. Results will be presented at the IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Buenos Aires in July 2023. The second project is the launch of IPSA’s first Open Access book Does the UN Model Work? Challenges and Prospects for the Future of Multilateralism. Published by Brill, the book will be available at the start of 2023. 

The second day began with the panel on National Expertise in Open Access Publishing chaired by IPSA Executive Committee member, Emilia Palonen (University of Helsinki, Finland). During the session, Dr. Palonen presented a research paper entitled Systemic Transition to Open Knowledge, co-authored with Riitta Koikkalainen (National Library, Finland). Her research indicates that non-profit learned societies in Finland publish almost all scientific journals in social sciences, art and humanities. Dr. Palonen also discussed the challenges of OA, such as finding OA funding models for Finnish scholarly publishers and readers. A policy network of various stakeholders, including the Finnish Federation of Learned Societies, universities, and libraries, proposed a funding model in which the university libraries would no longer have to pay subscriptions; however, the lack of funding remains the main obstacle.    

Jarosław Szczepański (University of Warsaw, Poland) shared his experience with OA publications in Poland and how they have transformed over the years. By highlighting the common challenges and difficulties Poland has faced with OA, Dr. Szczepański raised issues of money, language, and disinterest from editors that affect the popularity and growth of OA. Dr. Szczepański concluded his presentation by reflecting on the obstacles to the success of public-funded publications, including lack of funding and language barriers in journals.

In his presentation, Claver Boundja (Marien Ngouabi University, Congo) focused on scholarly publishing in Africa. The research paper proposes an innovative governance model which offers free publication of research results from networks and research centers in Africa. Dr. Boundja described how the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES), which gathers 19 Francophone countries in Africa, launched the project “electronic publishing of African scientific journals” (lecames.org), which aims to make African scientific research more accessible. From Dr. Boundja’s perspective, the main challenge is the lack of a data-indexing system for these journals.  

Finally, Josep Soler (University of Stockholm, Sweden) focused on predatory publishing, analyzing spam emails from various publishers. Dr. Soler pointed out that predatory publishers thrive on embedded features in present-day academic publishing, including Open Access, undermining the intrinsic scholarly value of academic research and its ethics. He concluded that to address the issue of predatory publishing, we should focus less on the danger of predatory publishing and more on the actual structures and cracks in the system that these publishers can exploit. 

The Development and Sustainability of the Open Access Model panel was chaired by Stephen Sawyer, Co-Editor of IPSA’s International Political Science Abstracts journal. Prof. Sawyer kicked off the session by outlining the different dimensions of sustainability.

Quentin Dufour (École normale supérieure - PSL, France) gave the first presentation entitled Supporting Open Access Diamond Journals. His study aims to test the feasibility of direct funding mechanisms for diamond journals. Dr. Dufour’s research project is based on a questionnaire survey sent to over one thousand diamond journals from more than 60 countries. The survey revealed that a majority of journals welcome direct funding, but it also highlights various internal and institutional challenges linked to this type of funding model. 

Roger Van Zwanenberg (Founding Managing Director of Pluto Journals, United Kingdom) shared his experience in transitioning Pluto Journals’ 21 publications to OA in 2020. His presentation reflected the perspective of a small journal publisher. Dr. Van Zwanenberg pointed out that although the demand for what they produce increases, the income decreases. Although the advantages of OA are numerous, he mentioned that it is not easy for social science journals to find ways to develop in the long term.

In her presentation, Frances Pinter (Central European University Press, United Kingdom) focused on Non-Book Processing Charge (Non-BPC) Publishing Models. According to her, the system has enough money, but its reallocation is challenging. Dr. Pinter offered that we need both BPC and Non-BPC models, and that these models will only work if money is redirected from buying closed content to supporting OA publishing. OA has the potential to save on costs, but it must be made attractive to those who pay. 

In his presentation entitled Open Access in Africa: Some Tales, Siphamandla Zondi (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) drew on his experience as Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal of Political Science and the International Journal of African Renaissance Studies. Prof. Zondi opined that there are worries about the commercialization and commodification of knowledge, whereas the OA movement coincides with the growing idea that knowledge is a public good that should not be monetized. 

The Publishers’ Perspective on the Future of Open Access roundtable discussion was chaired by IPSR Co-Editor Daniel Stockemer (University of Ottawa, Canada). In his opening remarks, Prof. Stockemer emphasized the role of publishers in OA. According to him, they are the ones who set the tone and lead the way forward toward Open Access publishing. 

The first speaker was Amy Appleyard from SAGE Publishing, the publisher of IPSA’s two journals, the International Political Science Review and the International Political Science Abstracts. Ms. Appleyard talked about SAGE’s OA policy and its different access options. She pointed out that although the market is changing rapidly, it is far from uniform. Based on her experience, although government policies can quickly change the landscape, not all areas of the world are willing to sign OA agreements. She says that while the industry is moving away from the traditional subscription model, there will be mixed models for some time.  

Next, Lucy Oates, Senior publisher at Oxford University Press (OUP), took the floor. She suggested that publishers should focus on improving the author experience and that as research becomes more openly available, the transformative agreement model will evolve to mitigate the unfairness it can lead to. In her view, while we will also see an increased focus on open research practices, a homogenous business model is unlikely.

Elizabeth Brophy from Wiley proposed that OA is just one aspect of Open Research and that Open Data and Open Practices cannot be ignored. In the short term, we should expect more transformative agreements and experimenting with different models. Dr. Brophy expects all journals to be online within the next five years and that there will be a move towards more transparent workflows. However, the market will still be dictating OA publishing practices.  

The final speaker at this panel was Stephanie Veldman from Brill who explained that the usage of OA publications at Brill has grown exponentially over the last few years. However, while OA articles are more visible and are shared more widely, this is only a means to an end. The one question that remains is who will be paying for OA. Ms. Veldman’s organization has two OA financing models: publications funded by a third party and conversion of journal subscriptions to OA.

The Fair Open Access Publishing in Political Science panel was chaired by Elizabeth Bloodgood (Concordia University, Canada). Dr. Bloodgood introduced the speakers who were invited to bring different national perspectives on open access in political science. 

The first speaker was Meenakshi Bansal (Indira Gandhi National Open University, India), the recipient of IPSA’s 2018 Global South Award. In her presentation, Open Access Publishing in Political Science: A Case of Indian University Spaces for Fair Research Access and Output, Dr. Bansal discussed the ongoing efforts and the current situation of OA publishing in Indian universities and institutions in the field of political science. 

Huw Price (Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom) was the second speaker. His presentation was entitled Examining the Evidence for an Open Access Policy Citation Advantage in Six Hybrid Political Science Journals. Dr. Price’s analysis focused on six prominent journals: the International Political Science Review, the American Political Science Review, the European Journal of Political Research, Environmental Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy and West European Politics. His research suggests that there is an OA Policy Citation Advantage (for Bronze and Gold-Hybrid content) compared to paywalled content (including Green OA). 

Dr. Daria Kazarinova (RUDN University, Russia) presented her research entitled An Open Access Journal for Political Science under Communicative Sanctions: Endangered Scholarly Communications. She discussed the role of science diplomacy and how sanctions and counter-sanctions affect research in Russia, where scientists have fewer international connections and their work is generally more restricted.

The final roundtable, chaired by Susan Appe (SUNY at Albany, Rockefeller College, United States), set the stage in Bringing Regional Perspectives to the OA Discussions.

Maria Laura Tagina (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina) focused on two main topics: the journal of the Argentine Society of Political Analysis (SAAP) and the landscape of OA in Argentina, in particular, and Latin America, in general. The journal was founded in 2022 and transitioned to a fully OA format in 2008. The association covers the journal’s costs through revenue from SAAP’s National Congress and its annual membership fees. For two decades, several Latin American countries have been working to create policies to promote quality OA science and publishing. These countries include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru. Argentina passed legislation to regulate OA policies that oblige public universities to provide OA research through their websites or portals. 

Martin Papillon (Université de Montréal, Canada) discussed the 2017 report of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) on Open Access publications. According to his presentation, the existing models and the OA transition simply do not work for political scientists in Canada and the solution involves funding and support from public authorities. Dr. Papillon concluded that scholarly associations are often pressured to take a risk and go with OA, even though it might ruin them financially.

The next speaker, Stéphane Paquin (École nationale d’administration publique, Québec, Canada) indicated that books from Québec are not easily accessible abroad. This can be due to shipping fees but also to the fact that books published in Québec are more expensive than those in most francophone regions of the world. Dr. Paquin also talked about the new publishing house he created in cooperation with the Québec Society of International Law (SQDI), which publishes free OA books. 

The final presenter was Valentina Reda, who discussed the ten-year experience in OA at the Federica Web Learning Centre for Digital Education at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. Dr. Reda highlighted two aspects of the development of Open Access publishing. The first one was the importance of the web as a source of easily accessible articles, which may lack formal scientific validation but foster scholarly debate and contribute to social science empirical research. The second one was the growing prominence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the academic landscape. Dr. Reda also discussed the IPSAMOOCs, a joint project by IPSA and Federica Web Learning Center. The courses are authored by some of the most outstanding academics in the IPSA community and have already attracted 84,000 enrolments from over 160 countries worldwide. 

Finally, Guylaine Beaudry, the Trenholme Dean of Libraries at McGill University, took the spotlight for the Closing Address with her presentation entitled The Transition Toward Open Access: A Librarian’s Perspective. Dr. Beaudry first talked about the role and importance of libraries and librarians, stressing that “without a network of libraries, there would be no university.” In the 21st century, libraries have become much more than a collection of books and periodicals, and now offer fundamental infrastructures for research, teaching, activities, and intellectually stimulating welcoming environments. Dr. Beaudry also drew a historical picture to explain the transition from traditional publishing, since the 13th century, to OA publishing, and mentioned that between 1917 and 2015, the top five international commercial publishers produced around 70% of all social science articles, giving them bargaining power over libraries and universities. She next touched on the collective actions of librarians, including the development of publishing services and the creation of institutional repositories. Another step was negotiating licences, such as transformative agreements with major commercial publishers. She pointed out that if librarians and researchers work together, they can increase their negotiation power over commercial publishers.