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Flipping academic journals to diamond open access: Notes on community governance

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In this blog post, Dr Caroline Edwards, Executive Director, Open Library of Humanities and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature & Culture, Birkbeck, University of London asks: How do we ensure that a flipped diamond open access journal can remain independent? How do we prepare for the long-term financial security of flipped journals and protect against their potential vulnerability to commercial acquisition in the decades to come?

Flipping academic journals to diamond open access (OA) presents a series of challenges to an academic publisher. You need certain niche competencies. Firstly, nothing happens without the complete trust of an editorial team that shares your appetite for risk. Then, you need the backing of an entire academic community, willing to follow the editorial team to a new journal (in cases where editors don’t own the journal IP, which is most cases) and undertake a boycott of the old “zombie” title. Underpinning all of this, you need the financial and technological resources to provide the necessary infrastructure for the flipped journal in perpetuity, to offer it a safe home with a long-term future that doesn’t require any author fees. This involves things like setting up and maintaining a new journal site, running a digital publishing platform for managing submission, review, and production processes, having the capacity to manage metadata integration with university library catalogues and discoverability databases, providing memberships at robust digital preservation organisations, and ongoing research and development to stay abreast of rapid changes within the digital publishing landscape. The list goes on.

The growing list of journals flipping to diamond OA from their commercial publishers is well known. Retraction Watch keeps an up-to-date list of editorial boards that have resigned from for-profit models and moved their titles to not-for-profit, community-governed models. Each has its own story, told across published statements, academic blogs, and in newspaper articles covering high-profile editorial resignations and academic boycotts. But what gets talked about less frequently is the community governance structure that will support the journal moving forwards. How do we ensure that a flipped journal can remain independent? How do we prepare for its long-term financial security and protect against future vulnerability to commercial acquisition in the decades to come?

At the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), I spend much of my time talking to editors about their journals. There is a depressingly common story. It usually goes something like this. Many academic journals were launched between the 1960s and 1980s, in a collaboration between university professors and small or independent publishing houses. Things worked pretty well until their small publisher was bought out in the 1990s or 2000s by a larger company, often overseen by a global parent company. They muddled along with a high turnover of staff on the publisher side. Over time, the publishing managers became harder to get hold of, production was outsourced overseas, and editors became increasingly aware of a decline in production quality. 

With the acceleration to open access in the 2010s, editors came under pressure to double or triple their article acceptance rates – with a drop in subscriptions revenue, commercial publishers had to recoup costs via article processing charges (APCs). The more volume they could pump out, the better their profit margins. Even when journal editors rejected unsuitable or poor-quality articles, publishers found a way to fast-track this academic content by surreptitiously channelling it through their digital platforms to their hundreds of other journals using the same platform. Not all editors were even aware that the transfer of rejected articles had taken place.

If the Editor(s)-in-Chief had the temerity to stand up for their academic principles and refuse to increase their journal’s article acceptance rates, at this point they could face legal challenges or dismissal. In several explosive cases in recent years, Editors-in-Chief have been fired by their commercial publishers after refusing to back down over these issues. Sacking an internationally renowned editor whose reputation has become synonymous with the journal’s own reputation isn’t for the faint-hearted. It says something about the desperation of commercial publishers and their shrinking profits that they would be willing to trash a journal’s reputation so comprehensively – among the very academic communities whose uncompensated labour produced that reputation in the first place.

At this point in my conversations with editors, I ask a difficult question: Who owns the journal? “The publisher” they say, or “we don’t know.” Sometimes they reply: “The founding editor has passed away; we’ve asked their children, but no one can find any paperwork.” Without the rights to the journal title, its name, and logo, editors must set up a new journal. Ensuring the continuity between the old (now trashed) journal title and the new journal title requires coordinating a mass resignation of editors and authors from the old journal, preferably along with a boycott by peer reviewers for the foreseeable future.

At the OLH we’ve spent almost a decade flipping academic journals to diamond OA, supported by a growing number of libraries worldwide who share our vision for a not-for-profit academic publishing future. It wasn’t called “diamond” when we launched in 2015, but the term has come to mean not-for-profit and community-governed OA. Our publishing model is inspired by an explicitly political project – if the OLH and similar university-owned journal publishers are to thrive, they need to divert university library funding away from the big 5 commercial publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Springer). This happens hand-in-hand with library advocacy. When expensive journals flip to diamond OA, librarians are empowered to cancel individual journal subscriptions. In the age of big bundles and journal packages, journal flipping allows them to renegotiate extortionate deals with commercial publishers in light of the shrinking number of titles in each package.

Since launching as a publisher in 2015, the OLH has flipped 20 journals in this way. It hasn’t always been easy, and we have learned a lot along the way. In cases where journals own their own intellectual property (IP), usually via a scholarly association or legal governing body, the process of migrating decades of back content requires highly complex, skilled technical work. In cases where journals don’t own their IP, editors are unable to take the journal title with them. In these cases, a new journal needs to be established to continue the mission of the original title. This leaves behind zombie journals; the undead husks of formerly respected titles, that commercial publishers refuse to close but cannot run when the entire scholarly community has agreed to boycott it. The case of Wiley’s Journal of Political Philosophy, which relaunched with the OLH as Political Philosophy in February 2024, is a case in point.

Some of the journals that the OLH has flipped to diamond OA have set up a nonprofit organisation to protect themselves. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, a former Wiley journal that dates back to 1966, was able to do this because the original editors had the foresight to protect their IP before their publisher Blackwell was taken over by Wiley in 2007 (the journal had previously been published by two different university presses, the University of Chicago Press (1966–1978) and Wilfrid Laurier University Press (1979–1989)). The Zygon editorial team set up its own not-for-profit scholarly corporation in Chicago in 2019, following a joint venture established in 1965 among founding partners. As a 501(c)(3) organization, the Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science NFP not-for-profit scholarly corporation is a charitable organisation exempt from federal income tax. This route is being taken by other OLH journals including Theory & Social Inquiry (formerly Theory & Society), Political Philosophy (formerly the Journal of Political Philosophy), and Free & Equal: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs (formerly Philosophy & Public Affairs).

Several of the OLH’s journals have been owned by scholarly associations since their inception, including Quaker Studies (founded by the Quaker Studies Research Association (QSRA)), Architectural Histories (founded by the European Architectural History Network (EAHN)), Digital Studies / Le champ numérique (founded by the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques (CSDH/SCHN), Marvell Studies (founded by the Andrew Marvell Society), Open Screens (founded by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS)), and The Parish Review (founded by the International Flann O’Brien Society).

In other cases, independent journals joining the OLH have made the decision to affiliate themselves with scholarly societies. This has been the case for [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, which has become the official video essay journal of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), and C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, which became the official journal of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS) when the new association was founded in 2017. This kind of affiliation secures the community governance of journals. Scholarly associations have articles of association that usually include the criteria for appointing journal editors, terms of office, and processes for collectively undertaking decisions about the journal’s functioning and health. 

Another route to long-term protection against commercial acquisition is for journals to join forces. This was the approach taken by 3 of the OLH’s journals who resigned en masse from Elsevier in 2015 – Lingua (which relaunched as Glossa), LabPhon, and the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics. Editors of these titles set up a community organisation, LingOA: Linguistics in Open Access as a Dutch Stichting (literally a “foundation”), a not-for-profit legal entity with limited liability similar to a trust, which is controlled by a board of directors and cannot have any shareholders. 

With support from the Center of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Leiden, Radboud University Library, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU), and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), LingOA was able to provide financial support for the journals beyond their funding agreement with the OLH. One of the OLH’s newest journals, Syntactic Theory and Research (STAR, which left Wiley) has also joined the LingOA Stichting.

Other journals that have joined the OLH in 2023-2024 will need to establish their own legal and ownership entities, and we continue to offer help and advice to editorial teams undertaking this important work. Our goal at the OLH is to liberate university research from commercial control. Flipping journals to diamond OA is the first step; enshrining community governance is the crucial next step. As more funding bodies mandate diamond OA and not-for-profit academic publishing infrastructure (such as this recent announcement by the NWO), the tide is turning against commercial actors. Now is the time for editors and scholarly communities to regain control of their scholarship.

This post does not necessarily reflect the view of Cambridge University Libraries.

Formatting the Future: Why Researchers Should Consider File Formats

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Dr Kim Clugston, Research Data Coordinator, OSC
Dr Leontien Talboom, Technical Analyst, Digital Initiatives

Many funders and publishers now require data to be made openly available for reuse, supporting the open data movement and value for publicly funded research. But are all researchers aware of why they are being asked to share their data and how to do this appropriately? When researchers deposit their research data into Apollo (the University of Cambridge open access repository) they generally understand the benefits of sharing data and want to be a part of this. These researchers provide their data in open file formats accompanied by rich metadata so the data has the best chance of being discovered and reused most effectively. 

There are other researchers who deposit their data in a repository during the publication process; this often takes place within tight deadlines set by the publisher. For this reason, researchers often rush to upload their data, and thoughts about how this data will remain preserved and accessible for long-term use are not considered. The challenges around preserving open research data were highlighted in this article. The authors addressed the concerns that open research data can include a wide variety of different types of data files, some of which may only be accessible with proprietary software or software that is outdated or at risk of being outdated soon. How can we ensure that research data that is open now stays accessible and open for use for many years to come? 

In this blog, we will discuss the importance of making data open, ensuring this is maintained for future use (digital preservation). We will use some examples from datasets in Apollo and suggest recommendations for researchers that go beyond the normal FAIR principles to include considerations for the long term. 

Why is it important for the future?

The move to open data, following the FAIR principles, has the potential to boost knowledge, research, collaboration, transparency and decision making. In Apollo alone, there are now thousands of datasets which are available openly worldwide to be used for reference or reused as secondary data. Apollo, however, is just one of thousands of data repositories. It is easy to see how this vast amount of archived data comes with great responsibility for long term maintenance. A report outlined the pressing matter that FAIR data, whilst addressing metadata aspects well, doesn’t really address data preservation and the challenges that this brings such as the risk of software and/or hardware becoming obsolete, and therefore data reliant on these becoming inaccessible.

Tracking the reuse of datasets could provide essential information on how different file formats are holding up, but there is an ongoing challenge to track dataset reuse. Datasets are not yet routinely cited in the established way that is seen for journal articles or other publication types. This is an area that is actively being developed through initiatives such as Make Data Count and it is hoped that at some point soon, data citation will become part of the routine practice of research to further enhance visibility on how data is being credited and reused. 

In Apollo, we see great interest in the available datasets as they are viewed and downloaded frequently. The most downloaded dataset in Apollo has been downloaded over 300,000 times since it was first deposited in 2015 and, interestingly, consists of open file formats. Other highly downloaded datasets in Apollo, such as the CBR Leximetric dataset, have been used by lawyers and social scientists and successfully cited as a data source to answer new research questions. The Mammographic Image Analysis Society database was deposited in Apollo in 2015 and has been frequently downloaded and reused by researchers working in the field of medical image analysis as discussed in a previous blog. To date, Google Scholar reports it has been cited 78 times. These datasets show the value of sharing and reusing data and all are in file formats that are accessible to everyone which will help to preserve them for as long as possible. 

Digital preservation is a discipline focused on providing and maintaining long-term access to digital materials. Obsolete software is a big problem in maintaining access to files in the future. PRONOM, a file format registry, keeps track of a large amount of known file formats and provides additional information on these formats. Last year, a file format analysis of datasets in Apollo was conducted to highlight what file formats are represented in the repository. The results revealed the diverse array of different file formats which is a testament to the breadth of research conducted and the adoption of open data across many disciplines. Most of the file formats are common and can still be opened, but a large percentage of the material has not been identified or are in formats that are not immediately accessible without migrating to a different format or emulating the current file formats. Table 1 shows a few complex examples of file formats held in Apollo. 

File FormatExample in ApolloFuture Use
.dx (Spectroscopic Data Exchange Format)LinkThis is not an open-source format, meaning that opening the file is dependent on the software being available
.mnova (Mestrelab file format)LinkProprietary file format, licence for the programme is expensive
.pzfx (Prism file format)LinkOlder format for a file software program called Prism. This is now considered legacy software.

The Bit List, a list maintained by the Digital Preservation Coalition that includes contributions from members of the digital preservation community, outlines the “health” of different file formats and content types,  including research data. In fact, unpublished research data (which is another issue outside the scope of this blog!) is classified as critically endangered and uncovers the problem that the majority of researchers generally only make data open at the point of publication. But even research data published in repositories has its difficulties and is classified as vulnerable, mainly due to the dependency on many file formats having the availability of the appropriate software to open and use them. There are potential solutions on the horizon to address this problem, such as the open-source ReproZip which packages research data with the necessary files, libraries and environments so they can be run by anybody. However, this still doesn’t address the issue of obsolete software. The gold standard would be to deposit research data in open formats, so viewing and using the files is not dependent on a particular software; the files will be open and accessible as long as they are held available within a repository.  

What researchers can do

What can researchers do to make sure that when they deposit data into a repository, it will be available for them and others in 10 or even 20 years time? Awareness is the first step. Researchers should consider submitting their data to a repository, one that is suitable for their files. Choose a trusted data repository. A recent blog highlighted the potential problem of disappearing data repositories, with approximately 6% of repositories listed on the repository search registry, re3data being shut down (most reasons are unknown but some were listed as organisation or economic failure, obsolete software/hardware or external attacks). Approximately 47% of the repositories that had shut down did not provide an alternative solution to rescue the data and it is assumed that this data is lost. It may be that your funder or publisher decides the repository for you, but we have some guidance on what to look for in a trusted repository. If you are at Cambridge, you can deposit your data in Apollo which has CoreTrustSeal certification.

The data itself is arguably the most important factor, we need to make sure the data files can be found and used by anyone at any time, forever. Ideally, this means using open file formats where possible as these don’t have any restrictions. The Library of Congress and the UK National Archives both maintain registries of file formats. There is some Cambridge University guidance on choosing file formats as well as some by the UKDS. Have a look at the file formats you have on the PRONOM database, is this seen as a sustainable format? If the data you are generating is from proprietary software, it is good practice to deposit this version as well as an open format that does not require any specialist software to open them. This ensures that both options are available in case of any loss of formatting from converting to open formats. An example are the statistical software packages SPSS and NVivo which are proprietary but have the option to convert to open formats such as a CSV file. 

There may be information on how to convert your file types to open formats within your discipline. In the Chemistry department here at Cambridge, an initiative was started together with the Data Champion programme to provide a platform to allow researchers to add instructions for converting experimental derived files into open formats. Open Babel is an open-source, collaborative project aimed at providing a “chemistry toolbox” with information on how to convert chemical file formats into other formats where needed. There is also some guidance on how to export from R to open formats such as txt and csv.

In some cases, it might not be possible to provide an open file format alternative. The files you use may be subject to discipline-specific standards or you are restricted by the hardware and software you use in your research. For these, it is important to provide good documentation or a detailed README file alongside the file format so researchers know how to access and use your files. In fact good file organisation, documentation and metadata is just as important as the files themselves, as data without any documentation is considered virtually meaningless. The more information you can provide the better and might possibly save you time in the long run from potential questions from other researchers in the future. 

The future use of past research hinges on the thoughtful selection of file formats. By prioritising openness and longevity, we lay the foundation for collaboration and innovation. Choices that researchers make today shape the accessibility and integrity of data for generations to come.

Methods getting their chance to shine – Apollo wants your methods!

Supporting Open Research,

By Dr. Kim Clugston, Research Data Co-ordinator, Office of Scholarly Communication

Underlying all research data is always an effective and working method and this applies across all disciplines from STEMM to the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Methods are a detailed description of the tools that are used in research and can come in many forms depending on the type of research. Methods are often overlooked rather than being seen as an integral research output in their own right. Traditionally, published journals include a materials and methods section, which is often a summary due to restrictions on word limits making it difficult for other researchers to reproduce the results or replicate the study. There can sometimes be an option to submit the method as “supplementary material”, but this is not always the case. There are specific journals that publish methods and may be peer-reviewed but not all are open access, rendering them hidden behind a paywall. The last decade has seen the creation of “protocol” repositories, some with the ability to comment, adapt and even insert videos. Researchers at the University of Cambridge, from all disciplines – arts, humanities, social sciences and STEMM fields – can now publish their method openly in Apollo, our institutional repository. In this blog, we discuss why it is important to publish methods openly and how the University’s researchers and students can do this in Apollo.

The protocol sharing repository, Protocols.io, was founded in 2012. Protocols can be uploaded to the platform or created within it; they can be shared privately with others or made public. The protocols can be dynamic and interactive (rather than a static document) and can be annotated, which is ideal for highlighting information that could be key to an experiment’s success. Collaboration, adaptation and reuse are possible by creating a fork (an editable clone of a version) that can be compared with any existing versions of the same protocol. Protocols.io currently hosts nearly 16,000 public protocols, showing that there is a support for this type of platform. In July this year it was announced that Protocols.io was acquired by Springer Nature. Their press statement aims to reassure that Protocols.io mission and vision will not change with the acquisition, despite Springer Nature already hosting the world’s largest collection of published protocols in the form of SpringerProtocols along with their own version of a free and open repository, Protocol Exchange. This begs the question of whether a major commercial publisher is monopolising the protocol space, and if they are, is this or will this be a problem? At the moment there do not appear to be any restrictions on exporting/transferring protocols from Protocols.io and hopefully this will continue. This is a problem often faced by researchers using proprietary Electronic Research Notebooks (ERNs), where it can be difficult to disengage from one platform and laborious to transfer notebooks to another, all while ensuring that data integrity is maintained. Because of this, researchers may feel locked into using a particular product. Time will tell how the partnership between Protocols.io and Springer Nature develops and whether the original mission and vision of Protocols.io will remain. Currently, their Open Research plan enables researchers to make an unlimited number of protocols public, with the number of private protocols limited to two (paid plans offer more options and features).

Bio-protocol exchange (under the umbrella of Bio-protocol Journal) is a platform for researchers to find, share and discuss life science protocols with protocol search and webinars. Protocols can be submitted either to Bio-protocol or as a preprint, researchers can ask authors questions, and fork to modify and share the protocol while crediting the original author. They also have an interesting ‘Request a Protocol’ (RaP) service that searches more than 6 million published research papers for protocols or allows you to request one if you are unable to find what you are looking for. A useful feature is that you can ask the community or the original authors of the protocol any question you may have about the protocol. Bio-protocol exchange published all protocols free of charge to their authors since their launch in 2011, with substantial financial backing of their founders. Unfortunately,  it was announced that protocol articles submitted to Bio-protocol after March 1 2023 will be charged an Article Processing Charge (APC) of $1200. Researchers who do not want to pay the APC can still post a protocol for free in the Bio-protocol Preprint Repository where they will receive a DOI but will not have gone through the journal’s peer review process.

As methods are integral to successful research, it is a positive move to see the creation and growth of platforms supporting protocol development and sharing. Currently, these tend to cater for research in the sciences, and serve the important role of supporting research reproducibility. Yet, methods exist across all disciplines – arts, humanities, social sciences as well as STEMM – and we see the term ‘method’ rather than ‘protocol’ as more inclusive of all areas of research.

Apollo (Cambridge University’s repository) has now joined the growing appreciation within the research community of recognising the importance of detailing and sharing methodologies. Researchers at the University can now use their Symplectic Elements account to deposit a method into Apollo. Not only does this value the method as an output in its own right, it provides the researcher with a DOI and a publication that can be automatically updated to their ORCID profile (if ORCID is linked to their Elements account). In May this year, Apollo was awarded CoreTrustSeal certification, reinforcing the University’s commitment to preserving research outputs in the long-term and should give researchers confidence that they are depositing their work in a trustworthy digital repository.

The first method to be deposited into Apollo in this way was authored by Professor John Suckling and colleagues. Professor Suckling is Director of Research in Psychiatric Neuroimaging in the Department of Psychiatry. His published method relates to an interesting project combining art and science to create artwork that aims to represent hallucinatory experiences in individuals with diagnosed psychotic or neurodegenerative disorders. He is no stranger to depositing in Apollo; in fact, he has one of the most downloaded datasets in Apollo after depositing the Mammographic Image Analysis Society database in Apollo in 2015. This record contains the images of 322 digital mammograms from a database complied in 1992. Professor Suckling is an advocate of open research and was a speaker at the Open Research at Cambridge conference in 2021.

An interesting and exciting new platform which aims to change research culture and the way researchers are recognised is Octopus. Founded by University of Cambridge researcher Dr Alexandra Freeman, Octopus is free to use for all and is funded by UKRI and developed by Jisc. Researchers can publish instantly all research outputs without word limit constraints, which can often stifle the details. Research outputs are not restricted to articles but also include, for example, code, methods, data, videos and even ideas or short pieces of work. This serves to incentivise the importance of all research outputs. Octopus aims to level up the current skew toward publishing more sensationalist work and encourages publishing all work, such as negative findings, which are often of equal value to science but often get shelved in what is termed the ‘file drawer’ problem. A collaborative research community is encouraged to work together on pieces of a puzzle, with credit given to individual researchers rather than a long list of authors. The platform supports reproducibility, transparency, accountability and aims to allow research the best chance to advance more quickly. Through Octopus, authors retain copyright and apply a Creative Commons licence to their work; the only requirement is that published work is open access and allows derivatives. It is a breath of fresh air in the current rigid publishing structure.

Clear and transparent methods underpin research and are fundamental to the reliability, integrity and advancement of research. Is the research landscape beginning to change to allow open methods, freely published, to take centre stage and for methods to be duly recognised and rewarded as a standalone research output? We certainly hope so. The University of Cambridge is committed to supporting open research, and past and present members who have conducted research at the University can share these outputs openly in Apollo. If you would like to publish a method in Apollo, please submit it here or if you have any queries email us at info@data.cam.ac.uk.

There will be an Octopus workshop at the Open Research for Inclusion: Spotlighting Different Voices in Open Research at Cambridge on Friday 17th November 2023 at Downing College.