Issues in Scholarly Publishing

Mike Nason
Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian
UNB Libraries
(2024 Edition, Version 1.0)

Introductions

It's me, Mike! Hello! I hope you're well, despite [gestures broadly] everything.

I'm your Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian.

I work, primarily, in a field referred to as "Scholarly Communications".

Introductions

My job is about helping you make the results of your research as accessible to the public (or, relevant research communities) as you need them to be, whether that's due to funding mandates, personal interest, or a sort of proactive capitulation.

I am here to help you. It's, like, specifically built into the CBA (16c.02). It is what librarians are for.

research data management
tri-agency oa requirements
open access publishing
scholar profiles
repositories
digital publishing
open educational resources
open infrastructure
persistent identifiers
scholarly publishing
scholarly communications
academic integrity
bad-faith publishers

for the next ~30 minutes, I'm going to take a swing at unpacking some of the bigger issues in modern scholarly publishing in a way that is, I hope, useful.

Grad student empowerment corner

An awful lot of things in academia will be presented to you as prescriptive, rigid, and/or immutable. This is especially true for topics related to publishing. But, the field has really changed a lot over the last two decades. You have supervisors or advisors for whom the landscape has shifted tremendously.

Deep Breaths

Here are three helpful (I hope) narratives for navigating different generations in/of academia.

What I want you to understand more than anything that very few things in academia are set in stone. Academia is a conservative place that is slow to change, but if you ask your instructors and/or advisors they will tell you that things are very different than they were even a decade ago.

1. Some things are ingrained in the culture of academia that will be very useful to you.

2. Some things are ingrained in academia that you can change or ignore because they make zero sense to you.

3. Newer things your generation will shape in a significant way that you will probably hear sassy things about.

You have [more] agency [than a lot of folks in academia might let on].

Until you decide otherwise, your work is your work. What you do with it is your business.

Scholarly Communications

A mouthful of a phrase that essentially means “the process by which researchers share/publish the products of research”. You're the scholars! That's you!

That's a whole lot of material generated by researchers, hey?

Wouldn't it be a shame if no one saw any of it? ¯\_(°⊱,°)_/¯

The whole point of scholarship is for, at least, some people to see your work and for your work to make some kind of difference. right? yes?

the whole point of scholarship is for, ideally, some as many people as possible to see your work and for your work to make some kind of difference.

Publishing and sharing research is a hugely important part of an academic career.

When you think about it, it's kind of wild that we don't spend more time talking about this stuff.

for a librarian like myself, scholarly communications work is about supporting publishing literacy and making these disparate products of research more available.

Scholarly publishing & sharing work

Publishing has changed quite a bit over the last couple of decades. That sounds like a long time, but when you consider whole generations of researchers and how long people spend in the profession, it's been pretty zippy. I'd like to empower you.

It is, I think, important that you publish with intention.

I also need you to understand that every discipline has a different publishing culture, and that your approach to research isn't universal.

KINDS OF PUBLICATIONS

Some disciplines move through research and publish at a quick pace. It can take about a year between the time you submit your work to a journal and for it to be published. For some physicists, their work is already out of date by the time it's published.

We call this a short tail. Fast research where the window of relevance is more immediate and iterative within a field of study. But there's also long tails!

• Long Tail
  • Monographs
  • Edited volumes, book chapters
  • Creative works
• Short Tail
  • Journal articles
  • Conference proceedings
  • Preprints
  • Posters

try not to fall into the trap of assuming that the way you work is the way everyone else does.

publishing is about submission, rejection, peer review, rejection, and ego/prestige

Publishing used to be relatively straightforward.

Where to publish?

• Is this a good journal?
  • Does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • Will my community of practice read it?
  • Will it be well-cited?
  • Am I in good company?
  • Is this a publisher of good repute?
• A presumption of access...
  • The people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • The best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

You are absolutely not going to know all of these things.

But, someone has been in your shoes and will have relevant information for you.

You can also talk to:

• librarians ( ͡◉ ͜ʖ ͡◉)

• community of practice

• your colleagues

It's ok!

Publications of repute will not come looking for you. (unless you are, like, a really big deal)

Keep your head on a swivel.

There is significant money to be made in exploiting folks who have more ambition than time/literacy.

But, sometimes it isn't!

once you've been published, then the metrics start.

impact, h-index, citations, repute, grants, research, publications, impact, citations, h-index, ego, prestige...

Publishing is less and less straightforward.

phew

we're gonna get political.

academic publishing is a hugely lucrative industry.

$$ is the primary cause of issues/tension/angst in academic publishing

open access

There are many wonderful things about open access. It's a very idealistic movement based on the idea that increased access to information will, in turn, provide more equality and equity in scholarship worldwide.

People should engage with open access because it is a moral good! Information wants to be free!

It was spurred through what's known as the "serials crisis" where journal subscriptions rapidly increased to such an extent that institutions struggled to keep up and research became more and more restricted to folks with deep pockets.

Open Access

• Being priced out of journals means being priced out of knowledge
• Schools with money are often in the global north
• Publicly funded research should be available to the public

The more people who can read your work, the larger an impact that work may have.

Access to knowledge is a public good.

Open Access

• Journals rely on subscriptions for revenue, and publishing is not free. copyediting and layout are labour. Distribution is labour web design/hosting... many costs!
• Publishers have a vested interest in maintaining their significant revenues.
• If a journal wants to operate with no subscription costs, it typically needs money from another source.

the apc

Author Processing Charge

But...

So then, some unscrupulous folks figured a few things out.

1. Researchers are under the gun to publish (or perish).
2. Open access appears to be trendy.
3. People don't know the OA journals as well. they're newish!
4. All of this is complicated enough that you can get someone to pay an APC for "fast peer review" you have no intention to do.

"predatory"

Though, I'd suggest, major publishers are just as predatory.

bad-faith publishers

• Before long, governments and funding bodies started to insist that publications coming from public money needed to be made public!
• You can add an APC to a funding proposal.
• Or, you can engage in open access in free ways (so-called "Green OA"), that are sometimes complicated and time-consuming!

"predatory"

Though, I'd suggest, major publishers are just as predatory.

and then, mandates

• Most publishers now put OA at the forefront via APC, for anyone under mandate.
• This means a lot of people just assume they have to pay an APC to meet OA requirements.
• They don't, usually they can share a pre-publication version.
• Publishers have successfully managed to monetize OA on top of their existing subscription fees.

which brings us back to...

the apc

Author Processing Charge

Some trends!

• Major publishers continue to raise subscription prices above the rate of inflation.
• "Article Processing Charges" (APCs).
• The ease of technology and relative lack of literacy among scholars results in an emerging "bad-faith" publisher boom.
• Pressure to publish – especially for early career researchers – coupled with increased workloads, job precarity, and a profound volume of publishing options, forces errors.

• The proliferation of the Open Access/Open Science movements.
• More organizations and tools present to help evaluate journals (DOAJ, CORE, OASPA... etc.).
• Funders and institutions mandate public access to publicly funded works.
• Ease of technology and interconnectedness of open scholarly infrastructure results in multiple versions of works available in myriad places. Everything is everywhere.

Now, you've got a lot more options but also more criteria.

Oh right, also

• Many authors are being made increasingly aware that they don't own their own work after it's been published.
• Peer-review itself is evolving to become more open or otherwise transparent.
• AI is causing a profound volume of problems across copyright, plagiarism detection, peer review, and "authorship".

• Some folks discovered that it's possible to pretend to be a scholarly journal and sometimes make money from it.
• Publishing is about submission, rejection, review, rejection, and ego.
• Real journals don't solicit.
• There's an enormous volume of grey area with questionable publishers that may have credible, quality journals.
• Figuring this out is work.

Let's talk specifically about mandates for a minute.

Where to publish?

How to publish?

What to publish?

Where to publish?

• Is this a good journal?
  • Does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • Will my community of practice read it?
  • Will it be well-cited?
  • Am I in good company?
  • Is this a publisher of good repute?
• A presumption of access...
  • The people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • The best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

Where to publish?

• Is this a real journal?
  • How many retractions does it have? Scandals?
  • Is it "predatory"?
  • Is the journal kind of ok, but the publisher isn't?
  • Are APC fees normal or bad? (The answer is "yes".)
  • Wait, why am I paying for publishing?
• A presumption of access...
  • Is this journal published by someone a whole entire country/state/school stopped working with?
  • How accessible do I want my work to be? For whom?
  • If I share a link, who hits a paywall?

How to publish?

• Open Access?
  • Is this journal open access or not?
  • What does "hybrid OA" mean?
  • Am I under an OA mandate?
  • Why am I paying for publishing?
  • Do I actually need to pay for publishing?
• A presumption of access...
  • What works can we find where?
  • How on top of all this do I need to be?
  • If I share a link, who hits a paywall?
  • How accessible do I want my work to be? For whom?

let's summarize

Is this a good journal? Is this a real journal? Does it have a good reputation in my field? Does it have retractions or other scandals? Does something about it seem predatory? What does "predatory" even really mean? What about the publisher? Does the journal look ok, but the publisher looks sketchy? Will my community of practice read it? Will it be well-cited? Am I in good company? Are APC fees normal or bad? Wait, why am I paying anything to publish in the first place? Doesn't this journal already make a ton of money? Do I want to support them with more money? Can the public read it? Does that matter to me? Is it as accessible to other researchers as I might assume it is? If I share a link, who will hit a paywall? What will it cost others to access it?

Is this journal open access? What does "hybrid OA" mean? Am I under some kind of mandate that requires me to share this work? Again, why am I paying for publishing? Do I need to? Does it matter to me which versions of the work are available? Does it matter to me where those versions are available? Why are you doing this to me? Do I have funding or support to open up an article via APC? What about my research data; where does that go? Does it all have to be open, or just some of it? Does it even have to be open? What am I allowed to share and where? What happens if I ignore the OA policy? Like, do I actually have to do this? Does any of this even actually matter?

How on top of all this do I need to be?

Great! That's it?! no problem. easy peasey, lemon squeezy. excellent! thanks! It couldn't be more simple, really. whew!

These decisions are non-trivial 
and, probably, overwhelming!

But, remember! you have agency.

Where and how you share your research affects the "impact" your work has on your research community and the public.

publish with intention.

publishing with intention.

If you'll indulge an editorial for a second... I'm going to be framing this next section in the context of open access. That's because most of the problems you experience while trying to figure out what a publisher is about to do to you and your work comes from that publisher or journal's response to the open access movement. I believe in open access. It is a public good. But, open access champions have lost significant ground to very, very large and very, very rich publishers who have managed to turn the movement from a potential threat to their profit margins into a hugely lucrative revenue stream.

In short, what's happened is that major publishers have seen open access mandates and, in response, converted a number of journals to "gold open access" where you have to pay an APC to publish. Or, they have a "hybrid" journal where you have to pay to open an article up while that journal still collects subscription fees. They are playing at open access, at $3500+ an article.

This sucks for a lot of reasons. One is that it means researchers are being asked to pay for publishing when they're already doing all the labour of research, authoring, peer-review, and editorial (a reminder that publishers don't pay you for this work, they are middlemen). Another is that they often obfuscate your options, so it isn't clear if you have other paths. Another still is that this conflict between access to knowledge and raw profit has become more work for you, a person who already has too much work.

A result of this is that you probably feel like open access requires you to spend money. Or that open access means having to pay an APC. This isn't true! But it does mean you'll have to pivot from thinking about this after submission to thinking about this before submission.

So, with this in mind, let's talk about open access and publishers.

OH, also, yes, of course the narratives here don't map 1:1 with monograph publishing.

Publisher Types

Because OA has come down to money, it's useful to remember that types of open access are often tethered to the financial model of the publisher.

Not for Profit Publishing

• Diamond Open Access
• Gold Open Access
• Green Open Access*
• Closed/Private Access

For Profit Publishing

• Gold Open Access
• Hybrid Open Access
• Green Open Access*
• Closed/Private Access

It is absolutely worth asking yourself if you want to support a specific publisher or journal.

Often we hear the phrase, "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism". But there is, i think, a case to be made for ethical publishing in academia.

other considerations

does this need to be open?

If you're not under mandate, and you're confident that you don't need to worry about your audience affording access to your work, then probably not.

It would be cool if it was, but I get it.

However, you do still need to ask the following:

• Are you under institutional, provincial, or federal mandate?
• Is a co-author under institutional, provincial, or federal mandate?
• Are you in a position to assert your own agency regarding your choice of publishers or is someone of repute telling you that these are the important journals, and you don't feel like you have much of a choice?

does this need to be open right now?

You can often choose a green route to open access, unless you're publishing with a "gold oa" journal.

This route often comes with a 12-month embargo. And, sometimes, you want your work to be released more quickly than that. In some cases, you might want to pay an APC just to get immediate open access.

And so:

• Are you under institutional, provincial, or federal mandate?
• Is this article time sensitive for specific communities (ie. COVID research)?
• Would immediate public access work better for you?

Can't someone cover my APC?

SOMETIMES.

Because of UNB Libraries' membership in national, consortial bargaining efforts with major publishers, we are sometimes able to leverage APC agreements with publishers.

Even still, it's rarely as simple as just saying "this publisher yes, this publisher no". There's often caveats.

But! You can visit our APC Guide for a list of all eligible publishers we have agreements with.

It's worth noting that some of these agreements will fully waive APCs, but just as frequently they are merely discounts.

We are always happy to help you sort this out!

Decisions, Decisions

I don't want to spend money to publish! A flowchart.

Selecting for Open Access

gold-oa journal

unb has apc waiver

free

$

unb has apc discount

no apc support

$$

hybrid journal

unb has apc waiver

free

$$

unb has apc discount

no self-archiving

free

allows self-archiving

$

no apc support

require immediate oa

I don't want to spend money to publish! Another flowchart.

Selecting for Open Access

diamond oa

subscribe to open

free

NO matter what you choose, you may well be able to self-archive your work.

This is my way of saying it would be super cool if you always did it when possible.

You also need to think about who gets your copyright and whether or not you're ok with that.

Finding Publisher Policies

Publishers don't love to be up front with their open access options. Sometimes you have to dig. SHERPA/RoMEO is a tool that lets you search for publisher policies to learn what rights for a specific journal will be.

If you don't have time for this or maybe want to check a handful of publications, you can contact us with this handy publishing support form, and we'll get back to you after evaluating.

SHERPA/RoMEO
A database of collected publisher policies, most easily searched by using a journal's ISSN.

Publishing Support Form
Tell us a little about your funding situation and the journals you're considering, and we can tell you if there's APC discounts available and/or what your options are for OA.

If your rights are ever ambiguous or if a journal’s policy is missing from SHERPA/RoMEO, we can help! Please contact me (mnason@unb.ca) or the copyright office at UNB Libraries (copyright@unb.ca) for assistance.

If you choose to house your preprints or accepted manuscripts in UNB Scholar, you can send them directly to me (mnason@unb.ca) or contact the liaison librarian assigned to your department/faculty.

We can absolutely help with

• Unpacking your options.
• Avoiding APCs.
• Interpreting publisher policies.
• Self-archiving with UNB Scholar.
• Self-archiving in other repositories.
• Evaluating past publications for oa compliance and potential self-archiving opportunities.
• Providing RDM advice.
• Sessions/workshops/literacy.

Again, I will happily refer to the CBA. I am contractually here to help you. It's, like, specifically built into the job (16c.02). It is what librarians are for.

I am always happy to discuss...

research data management
tri-agency oa requirements
open access publishing
scholar profiles
repositories
digital publishing
open educational resources
open infrastructure
persistent identifiers
scholarly publishing
scholarly communications
toppling capitalism

dataverse
open journal systems
navigating apcs
orcid support
evaluating journals
publishing literacy
metadata literacy
data management plans
"predatory publishers"
student journals
open science/scholarship
taking back scholarship from publishers

Bookmarkables and contacts (Publishing)

UNB Libraries Supporting OA
Documentation and general support.

UNB Libraries APC Discounts
Guides to APC Discounts for UNB.
 

UNB Scholar Research Repository
Deposit your work! Self-archive!
 

UNB Scholar Deposit Form
Send us your publications.

UNB Libraries Publishing Support Form
We can help sort out policies/options.

SHERPA/RoMEO
Check publisher policies.

Meeting Tri-Agency Requirements
My deck for ORS grant workshops.

Think, Check, Submit 
A resource for evaluating publishers.

Bookmarkables and Contacts (Research Data)

Publishing Support Folks
Mike Nason
Cat Gracey
Joanne Smyth
Julie Morris
James MacKenzie

UNB Libraries RDM Services 
Research Data Management help.

Data Management Planning
DMP support and documentation.

Contact Me Directly
mnason@unb.ca

UNB Scholar Inquiries
unb.scholar@unb.ca

Bookmarkables and Contacts (Research Data)

RDM Support Folks

Tatiana Zaraiskaya
Siobhan Hanratty
James MacKenzie
Mike Nason

UNB Libraries RDM Services 
Research Data Management help.

Data Management Planning
DMP support and documentation.

Contact Me Directly
mnason@unb.ca

RDM Services Contact
rdm.services@unb.ca

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you want to talk about publishing stuff.

Librarians love nothing more than the acknowledgement of their existence.

Thanks. Questions?

mnason@unb.ca
lib.unb.ca/openaccess