Scroll down to read a blog written for work, with Kait Clark in October 2023 about some of the perils of academic publishing and the possibility of “some” open-access arrangements. The blog linked below is an extended version of this shorter output published on the UWE Library Blog.
The main blog discusses issues with both academic journal article publishing and academic book publishing. In short: how profit can sometimes come before either standards or accessibility.
It highlights both predatory publishing and importantly – because its less known about – questionably profitable publishing. It notes how there are potential issues around publishers like MDPI and Frontiers, but also for traditional academic publishers like Nature, Wiley, and others.
The blog talks about the potential of diamond open access publishing to sort some of these problems out. Whilst, at the same time, noting that there are wider issues and even getting reviewers to review articles can be a struggle at the moment.
We then look at online academic books and find similar issues, with profits sometimes seeming to be the main priority of publishers (see the #ebookSOS campaign). Here again, open-access book publishing offers potential ways forward.
To learn more about these important issues, read the blog here.