Flipping to Diamond Open Access: Interviews with LIS Journal Editors
Date
2024-05
Authors
Dawson, Diane (DeDe)
Borchardt, Rachel
Auch Schultz, Teresa
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Abstract
Librarians are often at the forefront of advocacy for a transition to an equitable open access (OA) publishing system, but many of our own journals remain behind paywalls or charge inequitable author fees to publish OA. About half of Library and Information Science (LIS) journals use such hybrid models or do not offer OA publishing at all. We recently conducted a survey of editors of LIS journals that have not transitioned to a diamond OA model (without fees for authors) and learned that a journal’s financial situation is a barrier and many editors indicated a lack of awareness of their journal’s budget. It was also apparent that editors may not be fully aware of the diversity of diamond OA funding options available to support this transition.
To further investigate these financial and other perceived barriers preventing LIS journals from transitioning to a more equitable diamond OA model, we interviewed 15 lead editors of LIS journals: eight from journals that remain behind a paywall and seven from journals that have successfully transitioned from subscription to a fully diamond OA model. In this session we will discuss preliminary results from this qualitative research, including dominant themes emerging from the initial coding of interview transcripts and our early interpretation of these themes. Ultimately, we hope the results from this research will assist in the development of solutions and supports for LIS journals in making this transition to an equitable diamond OA publishing model. And we anticipate that members of the Library Publishing Coalition may be critical partners in the success of such potential solutions and supports in the future.
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LIS journals, Diamond open access, Qualitative research, Scholarly communication, Journal publishing
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Part Of
Library Publishing Forum 2024