Mandate for Accessible Publishing

While the growth of more and more digital resources has enabled further dissemination of education and scholarly content, it is also true that not all digital content is the same in terms of its ability to be read by all users. Sometimes, choices as simple as background color or font contrast can be the difference between an excellent promotional tool and unusable material, simply because of the way it interacts with different accessibility tools. Additionally, as technology advances and content is delivered in wildly different and creative ways, it is also crucial to think about how those technologies fit in to a scholarly landscape where screen-readers and adaptive technologies are able to make content clear to a user who may not be to consume knowledge in the way it was originally designed.

Recently, The United States Department of Justice added formal language that speaks to the requirement of accessible sites for all publicly funded sites. The mandate sets a deadline of April 24, 2026 for all public entities with a population of over 50,000 – and sets an extended deadline for those entities under 50,000 – for April 26, 2027. For many state-run public institutions, this could mean a fairly rapid transition to accessible web-apps and content delivery within the next year and a half. While there will certainly be fits and starts and pain-points along the way, much of the mandated changes are necessary requirements – familiar to many web developers, librarians, or content managers as best practices. And while many aspired to maintain websites that maintained accessibility standards, this mandate ups the urgency for many institutions – who will have to ensure their digital content is in accordance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG 2.2)

While these changes will likely be difficult to implement, many accessibility advocates understand this as an important mandate that will allow many users to gain access to information it could have been impossible to access prior to necessary changes. Indeed, it seems all but inevitable that major institutions will have to set aside resources and staff to re-working websites and platforms to ensure that they are accessible up to a standard. And while this may seem like a tremendous burden, the reality is that it is the least institutions can do to effectively deliver content to everyone regardless of a given users needs, and hard work in getting content accessible now will create many more equitable spaces going forward.

If this mandate will be rescinded or modified in the coming years may be hard to predict, but the reality will remain for authors and content creators that accessibility helps everyone access content, which should be a basic goal of publishing anything. Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services have recently put together a short guide for Making your PDF Accessible. Please also be sure to see our Libguides on Accessibility best practices.

Update: Journal Publishing with Boston College Libraries

The libraries portfolio on Open Journal Systems continues to gain new publications – particularly from undergraduate students looking to gain experience with peer review and working through the process of publication.

Additionally, students have approached the Scholarly Platforms team with the hopes of launching new publications; one a human rights journal run by undergraduates, and the other a graduate publication organizing submissions and providing online options outlining the yearly proceedings of the Massachusetts Council of Philosophy. Publishing the work through Open Journal Systems will ensure that it is preserved via our private LOCKKS network hosted by Public Knowledge Portal, as well as providing automatic indexation and optimization in google searches. OJS also compiles readership statistics so that editors can better understand where, how, and when there readers are interacting with their material.

Most recently, the undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College, Dianoia, published its twelfth issue. Additionally, after several years of dormancy, the undergraduate political science journal of Boston College, Colloquium, is on the precipice of publishing their fifth volume after a four year hiatus. Both journals offer opportunities for undergraduates to gain audiences and readers for their work while also gaining experience with peer review and publishing. Click on the links below to view readership statistics and visualizations for Dianoia or Colloquium.

If you are interested in starting a journal or moving an existing publication to a more secure, sustainable home, reach out to Gabriel Feldstein or Elliott Hibbler on the Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services team.

Open Access Mandate – NIH Implementation Date Moved Up 6 Months

At the end of April, the director of the National Institutes of Health announced that the implementation date for the 2024 Public Access Policy would be pushed up from the end of 2025 to July 1, 2025. The Policy amends a 2008 policy which allowed for a one year embargo before articles publicly funded with NIH grants had to be made fully open access. Effective July 1 of this year, no such embargoes will be allowed.

This is driven perhaps in part by a lack of faith in our scientific institutions, as NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya claims, this move could help strengthen trust in scientific research when many are unsure about the utility of scientists. While this is certainly a step toward transparency, many also wonder how feasible this will be on such relative short notice. With many researches and institutions already working hard to achieve full open accessibility by the original December 31 deadline, the new deadline may pose some difficult challenges.

Inside Higher Ed published an article discussing these changes and cites Matt Owens, who is the president of the Council of Government Relations, who worries that the new deadlines will impose extra burdens on grantees and their institutions. Owens also points out what he sees as a contradiction on the part of the NIH, as the organizations increases certification and financial reporting requirements while at the same time claiming to reduce regulation in the form of moving this deadline up. Owens has issued a statement urging the NIH to reconsider this policy change – while making clear that there is still genuine interest and effort going into meeting the NIH policy demands, particularly under the more realistic timeframe that was originally laid out.

It is difficult to predict exactly what the landscape will look like as we approach the new deadline – but either way, in the short term, universities with faculty or staff that receive NIH grants will have to put a great deal of effort into building open infrastructure that can comply with open access mandates.

Open Access Fund – Year in Review

Orange circular lock shown in "unlocked" position - the Open Access logo.

With the closing of another fiscal year, Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services is glad to report another year in which the funds set aside to cover Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Open Access articles were used up very quickly. While it is unfortunate to have to begin a waitlist so soon after opening the fund, it means that all of the funding is going towards making Boston College scholarship more openly accessible for scholars and researchers around the world.

This year, authors from fields including Biology, Nursing, Psychology, and Social Work had applications accepted, meaning that the burden of covering the costs to make their work openly accessible was covered by the university. Lowering the burden of cost for readers is an important part of what we can do in libraries to help make scholarly research more equitable – that said, creating a system where authors pay to make their work open could mean that institutions with more funding are more able to make their work openly accessible, increasing its reach more than a less financially well-off university or institution. The Open Access Fund does not fund scholarship submitted to “hybrid” or “transformative” journals, which are journals that provide the option to authors to make their individual articles available for free, but ultimately charge a subscription. As always, it is important to think critically about how our decisions and platforms may lead to certain voices or elements being elevated as a result of the systems we have in place.

To see a list of past winners of the award and data visualizations detailing the breakdown of our funding, check out this LibGuide on the Open Access Publishing Fund. While changes to the funding structures of many institutions are currently in flux based on broader geo-political shifts, we hope to be able to offer a number of Boston College authors open access publishing funds in the coming year – if you are interested in making your upcoming project available open access, please check back at the beginning of June for more information.

International Higher Education – now on PubPub

Boston College’s portfolio of journals spans across disciplines – some are produced quarterly or semesterly by undergraduate students, others may publish once a year with editorial staff comprising of BC faculty and other experts. Overall, there are a number of publications with different purposes, audiences, and editorial processes.

Followers of this newsletter likely know about the portfolio of work that exists on Open Journal Systems, the libraries primary platform for ejournal publication. Recently, however, International Higher Education moved their ejournal to a site called PubPub. While this platform is relatively new, it offers a tremendous amount of flexibility during the editorial process – with consistent version control that allows multiple editors to look over a document at the same time. PubPub, developed by Knowledge Futures, is an open source publishing platform. International Higher Education is currently using PubPub to publish their ejournal online and mint DOIs for their articles.

Unlike many other journal publishers, PubPub aims to be a platform for a wide variety of needs. Additionally, as they move toward rolling out a new open source product called “PubPub Platform” it is clear their intention is to provide space for a wide variety of formats:

Screenshot from PubPub site including the text: Experiential journals that feel like interactive exhibits. Impact repositories that steward grant proposals from submission to triage to publication. Preprint serves that seamlessly solict and display structured review. If you can dream it, we can help you build it with PubPub Platform.

While Boston College Libraries does not have an explicit relationship with PubPub, we have had tremendous success in working with them to ensure that International Higher Education has a stable and readily accessible home that also preserves the journal’s modern look and feel. IHE has recently published their 122nd issue! While users interact with the journal on the PubPub site, another copy of the journal is also uploaded to Open Journal Systems, which maintains industry standard LOCKKS preservation. By utilizing both publishing platforms, IHE is able to meet the needs of their users while also ensuring the safety and sustainability that comes along with preserving the journal properly.

Front page of IHE's PubPub website with a picture of the cover of their 122nd issue.

If you have any questions about using PubPub for a collection or publication, reach out to Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services.