Mike Nason
Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian | UNB Libraries
Open Scholarly Infrastructure Advisor | Public Knowledge Project
2026 Edition, version 1.0
ALTERNATIVE PUBLISHING
Faculty-flavoured
Camposantoblog. (2016, February 9). Firewatch Launch Wallpaper. Tumblr. Retrieved March 9, 2026, from https://blog.camposanto.com/post/138965082204/firewatch-launch-wallpaper-when-we-redid-the
Introductions
It's me, Mike! Hello! I hope you're well, despite [gestures broadly] the crippling geopolitical nightmare in which we find ourselves.
I'm your Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian.
I work, primarily, in a field referred to as "Scholarly Communications".
Introductions
My job is about helping researchers make the results of their work as accessible to the public (or, relevant research communities) as they 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
A LOT OF THE TIME, I TALK ABOUT BROAD PUBLISHING TRENDS AND HOW PUBLISHING WORKS. In these sessions, I've asked YOU (AND ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN) TO "PUBLISH WITH INTENTION".
HOWEVER, I'M ALSO ALMOST ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING. JOURNALS AND ARTICLES. NAVIGATING PUBLISHERS.
TODAY IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT!
Let's talk about modern publishing
One of the major advantages we have today is that publishing and the technologies that facilitate it are evolving alongside – or actively in spite of – the mainstream publishing industry. Traditional publishing has all kinds of flaws! Some folks are working to address them.
It remains, I think, important that you publish with intention.
It remains, I think, important that you publish with intention.
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.
Publishing is less and less straightforward.
Peer review is as important as it's ever been, but researchers are already under a lot of pressure to publish more often, or teach bigger course loads.
Finding reviewers can be brutal, and because so much of peer review happens in the dark, it can be hard to see the impact of this [typically volunteer] labour.
Peer Review </3
Because data is stored, described, and disseminated online, there are more supplemental and/or related works to publications available than there used to be.
It's easier than it's ever been to find additional works by authors or see how research, funding bodies, and publications are connected.
Supplementals
Researchers share preprints.
Publishers regularly release material prior to the publication of an issue.
Retractions seem more common, and what we used to refer to as the "version of record" is a little more pliable now that we're not bound to what's been printed.
It's more Iterative
It's more Iterative
Supplementals
Peer Review </3
Being charged an APC when you were just trying to accommodate a funder mandate and then having to decide if you need to find the money somewhere or withdraw a paper is, I would imagine, enormously demoralizing.
Publishers are selling whole catalogues of work to LLM developers for AI training.
Researchers don't own their work.
Everything is more expensive.
The big 5 publishers aren't here to make friends
Open access is happening to researchers as much as it's happening for researchers.
Public money comes with requirements.
There's more reputable OA journals every day, but there's also more grey area publishers, more sophisticated "bad-faith publishers", and less clarity from major publishers about which options will or won't cost authors money.
Researchers have their guard up.
Trust is a problem
Trust is a problem
The big 5 publishers aren't here to make friends
and so, we end up with way more stuff to think about (and this is without factoring in, like, a news feed) and probably less time than ever to think about it.
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?
What to publish?
- Which versions am I sharing?
- Preprints on a preprint server like arxiv?
- Accepted manuscripts in our institutional repo?
- Links to publisher PDFs I paid an APC to open up?
- Links to publisher PDFs that most people can't read?
- Subsets of my research data?
- All of my research data?
-
A presumption of access...
- What am I allowed to share?
- Which versions of things are open, and which aren't?
- How open should my data be? Does it need to be?
in the interest of being overwhelming
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?
These decisions are non-trivial!
These decisions are non-trivial
But, remember! you have agency.
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.
publish with intention.
Publishing with intention
I hope you're still with me! Let's help you publish with intention. Let's talk about what this means and why I think it's important enough to nag you for this long about it.
ALTERNATIVE EDITIONALTERNATIVE EDITIONALTERNATIVE EDITIONIf 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 $3800+ an article. And they're making huge profits from it.
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.
So one super cool thing that's happening is that communities of researchers are going, "you know what, let's just opt out of mainstream publishing? Right? Because it's not working for us and this is our work and we can decide what things like "high impact" mean to us.
We can set our own priorities. We have agency here. Maybe we can mix things up.
So, publishing has taken some turns. As folks step outside of the traditional publishing industry, they're re-defining how we think about "the journal" in general. They're also raising hackles.
There are a lot of journals not managed by major publishers who, instead, have found other ways to run their own publications. They use open source software for their workflows. They rely on any number of financial models to operate (from Diamond OA, which I'll talk about, to society memberships, to full subscription models).
Independent journals set their own policies and expectations. It's not uncommon for an editorial board for a major journal to split off and create it's own, open access publication.
Independent Journals
On the more benign side of the spectrum, one way that publications are getting away from traditional publishing is by releasing versions of work throughout the whole of the publishing lifecycle. These are mostly represented by articles published immediately following peer review and updated as they move through layout and copyediting.
They also, increasingly, are published outside of the convention of "issues" and "volumes".
Continuous Publication
One of the bigger movements in the space of reclaiming publishing for academics is diamond open access. Diamond OA is predominantly scholar-led, and doesn't charge APCs or subscription fees.
Instead, Diamond OA looks for new, alternative financial models and funding to equitably distribute resources amongst publications. They try to strike a balance between funding, costs, and sustainable services.
Diamond OA
Another emerging trend in this space is with "Publish, Review, Curate" models. These platforms are kind of like large journals that publish continuously (without issues or volumes).
But, they also allow users to publish a work and have it open for public/open peer review. That work is reviewed by an open community. When it receives enough positive reviews, that work is more formally published. All versions of the work (and reviews) are open access.
Publish, Review, Curate
Peer Community In is a pretty interesting model where they've taken the idea of a publicly funded Diamond OA journal and decoupled it from open or otherwise community-based peer review that may be applied in other publications.
For example, I could provide a manuscript to PCI and peer-review happens at the behest of it's community. If it receives endorsement, I could take that to a different publication or publish it with PCI.
New trust models
These new models/methods step away from traditional publishing in any number of ways, but they're also an expression of real tensions and frustrations felt by researchers.
When I harp on about agency, it's because there are lots of researchers all over the globe who have looked at modern, traditional scholarly publishing and either didn't want to be a part of it, or wanted something that better reflected their values, workflow, research, communities of practice... etc.
agency
It's not an easy decision to make. After all, so much of the "prestige economy" in academia is predicated on where you publish and whatever numerical impact metric by which that work is evaluated.
But some communities move when the industry stops working for them. Does that make their work less valuable? Less reliable? Less profitable (for some)?
When I talk about publishing with intention, what I very much mean is that this is the sort of stuff you should be thinking about before you submit your work to a journal.
When I talk about publishing with intention, what I very much mean is that this is the sort of stuff you should be thinking about before you submit your work to a journal.
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?
How to publish?
- Do I want to publish outside of major publishers and the for-profit publishing industry as a whole?
- What do my decisions about where I want to publish my work say about my values, politics, priorities, and ethics?
- Do emerging models of publishing work for my research and community of practice? Could they?
Please consider what it means to you to publish with intention.
What happens to the product(s) of your labour is super important, actually.
Please consider what it means to you to publish with intention.
What happens to the product(s) of your labour is super important, actually.
resources
Here are some resources for looking things up and getting help if you find yourself in that situation and you don't want to ask me stuff!
Finding Publisher Policies
Publishers don't love to be up front with their open access options. Sometimes you have to dig. Open Policy Finder 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.
Open Policy Finder
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 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. Or go to the repository and click on the "deposit" link.
If your rights are ever ambiguous or if a journal’s policy is missing from open policy finder, we can help! Please contact me (mnason@unb.ca) or the copyright office at UNB Libraries (copyright@unb.ca) for assistance.
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.
We can absolutely help with
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
I am always happy to discuss...
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.
Open Policy Finder
Check publisher policies.
Meeting Tri-Agency Requirements
My deck for ORS grant workshops.
Think, Check, Submit
A resource for evaluating publishers.
Bookmarkables and contacts (Publishing)
Bookmarkables and Contacts
(Publishing Support)
Publishing Support Folks
Mike Nason
Cat Gracey
Joanne Smyth
Julie Morris
James MacKenzie
Contact Me Directly
mnason@unb.ca
UNB Scholar Inquiries
unb.scholar@unb.ca
Bookmarkables and Contacts
(Publishing Support)
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
Bookmarkables and Contacts
(Research Data)
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.
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.
Mike Nason
https://lib.unb.ca/publishing
mnason@unb.ca
Thanks
Camposantoblog. (2016, February 9). Firewatch Launch Wallpaper. Tumblr. Retrieved March 9, 2026, from https://blog.camposanto.com/post/138965082204/firewatch-launch-wallpaper-when-we-redid-the