Recently, the staff of the Theology and Ministry Library added a new permanent display to its current periodical reading area promoting the discovery of open-access publications. They made the new addition to both highlight the importance of this form of publishing and to support the particular research needs of the students of the Clough School of Theology and Ministry (CSTM). Many key international publications in theology are now being made available open-access, and this helps students from the CSTM, 32% of whom are international and from 24 different countries. To complement the physical display, the staff also created an online guide to provide direct links to publications.
While open access publishing is gaining popularity in the United States, global developments in adopting open access policies and building infrastructure generally outpace the rate of developments in the United States. Of course, it is not a competition, and learning about open access publications and presses from all over the world will help contribute to a more thoroughly connected, diverse, and complete scholarly record. In recent decades, different organizations are working to consolidate different open access policies, publications statistics, and trends in one place or dashboard.
One of these is the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, which has compiled statistics on open access output by country and by institution. And while the United States has the highest quantity of open publications between 2000 and 2024 at 7,269,454, this represents only 44% of total domestic publications – while countries like Indonesia (1,487,632 total open access pubs) and Peru (97,881 open pubs) publish 91% and 82% open access, respectively. Dashboards and initiatives like these help to track progress – or comparative lack of progress, over the years as it relates to the actual publication of open materials. Studying the examples of countries that have quickly transitioned to producing a much higher percentage of open access publications is an important part of the work of open access advocates.
Another excellent tool for the tracking of open access projects is OpenAPC, which attempts to track where Article Processing Charges (APCs) are being paid from and which publishers are being paid. While the project does not have enough data from the United States institutions to suggest any sort of narrative domestically, many European (especially German) institutions have contributed data to the project – and the site is very useful at understanding all the differing pieces that make open access publishing work across the world.
The top funder of APCs in OpenAPC, rather unsurprisingly, is listed as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Having contributed over 31 million euro in APCs, the foundation alone has funded over 7% of all APCs on the site itself – and that is just what IS recorded by OpenAPC. The site also usefully tracks to increased prevalence of Transformative Agreements and expenditure on processing charges for open access monographs.
While the landscape around open access changes rapidly depending on the discipline, country, and institutional attitude, having a sense of what policies exist and what publications can supplement or compliment collections with low cost can help open access advocates and librarians fight for more equitable access for our students.
For the second year since the beginning of the initiative, JSTOR has produced its 2024 list of open titles. While some of these titles are still yet to be made available fully Open Access, JSTOR’s Path to Open initiative promises to deliver 300 titles being published annually over the course of the pilot from 2024-2026. Unfortunately, while access has been expanded, there is a de facto embargo on these titles, as the thousand-odd titles that are too be released each year would only be accessible for participating institutions in the Path to Open platform – and the full release of the titles would not take place until three years after the release to the subscribing university presses or libraries. The good news, however, is that Boston College is indeed a participating institution, so Boston College affiliated students and faculty will have the opportunity to access JSTOR’s Path to Open collections as soon they are made available.
Despite the “embargo,” this initiative will continue to push the conversation in the direction of full open access – as subscription based platforms like JSTOR continue adapt models that allow for more openness. Additionally, these titles are not selected at random, rather, JSTOR’s Path to Open is clearly prioritizing diverse voices that can have the largest impact on the discourse:
“The collection features peer-reviewed monographs in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on works that bring forward diverse perspectives and ideas.
To help in identifying titles that would be most impactful for libraries and scholars, titles were selected that were associated to disciplines with the highest overall usage and were associated to the highest used search terms on JSTOR.”
JSTOR has provided title lists of resources that are currently available to members via the 2023 title list – and also have provided links to some of what is, or will be, released in 2024.
More and more across academia, students getting involved with scholarly publishing on their campuses. Whether this takes the form of contributing to research papers or authoring articles and submitting them to journals, young scholars are seeking opportunities to participating in developing discourse and add to the scholarly record. Boston College libraries in particular supports this in a variety of ways; all students are welcome to apply for funding via the Open Access Publishing Fund, which provides support with the coverage of Article Processing Charges for authors interested in submitting work to, and our Open Journal Systems platform, which currently hosts nine student journals publishing material.
Given the relative increased interest, the timing of this new title could not have been better. How to Edit and Manage a Successful Scholarly Journal: Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences was publishing in May of 2024 and consists of eighteen chapters covering a wide variety of central topics that any young scholar should keep in mind. From best practices around building an editorial team to how to judge questionable and predatory editorial behaviors, this helpful guide provides a foundation for higher education practitioners interested in guiding students through the process of being published or attempting to manage a serial. And indeed, the ebook is now fully accessible for rental through the Boston College libraries’ catalogue.
While there are eighteen chapters in the collection that cover a wide range of topics geared towards helping scholars think about publishing in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, Chapter 8 “Rebound and renewal: strategies and tactics for journal revitalisation” focuses on some ideas for picking up journals that may struggle to consistent gather and publish content on a quarterly or yearly basis. The chapter outlines best practices around communications with an editorial board and some suggested leadership roles, and also discusses ideas for attracting submissions, such as publishing “special issues” with a clearly defined focus – inviting a wider array of reviewers for a more non-committal approach to introduce young scholars to participating in scholarly publishing. Additionally, sticking to consistent timelines for the review process leads to more consistent positive relationships with authors, which can help provide sources of content when a journal is looking for submissions.
Here at Boston College, we have a number of journals that still enjoy tremendous global readership, but are no longer publishing current issues. Elementsis a interdisciplinary undergraduate journal with a long history of publication at Boston College, but is currently not actively seeking submissions. Additionally, Lingua Frankly, another long time student publication, explores undergraduate work that has to do with language or linguistics, but has not had an active editorial board since the major disruptions of the pandemic. If you have interest in revitalizing or starting your own an open access journal at Boston College, please reach out to Gabriel Feldstein and the Scholarly Communications Team for more information. Click the images below to view the publications from the respective student journals.
Elements has been in publication since 2005 and has published 28 issues with Boston College Libraries.Lingua Frankly, Boston College’s undergraduate linguistics journal, has published 4 volumes starting in 2013.
As publishers, librarians, faculty, and administrators continue to search for more equitable means of providing learning materials to their students, new methods and ideas have surfaced as ways of knocking down financial barriers to accessing textbooks and other educations resources.
One exciting new development from different academic libraries and library coalitions has been the development of Open Educational Resources, or OERs. According to Education Week, “Open Educational Resources are materials for teaching or learning that are either in the public domain or have been released under a license that allows them to be freely used, changed, or shared with others.” Generally, these resources are developed by faculty in conjunction with librarians or university presses with published expertise. As more and more OERs are created, more and more syllabi are including OERs, as professors know that students can access these materials without having to incur costs.
On the other hand, publishers have also tried to address the need for more affordable course materials by packaging access to materials in what they are calling “equitable” or “inclusive” access. When students enroll for a class, if they do not choose to proactively opt-out, the cost of their textbooks is averaged across the entire institution, regardless of the particular courses a student may be taking, and added to the students tuition bill – ensuring that students will be able to access materials assigned by a professor in a course. For teachers and students, these models can seem similar, as both ensure that students will have “Day One Access” to the materials (that is to say, they will have access to the course materials without an extra cost or step of buying the textbook on the first day of the semester). However, the methodology behind each is very different.
Open Educational Resources are built explicitly as low or no cost options for courses. These tools are often developed by faculty and generally under CC BY licenses, allowing for derivatives to be built and possibly improved by future uses and technologies. Inclusive Access, however, is a profit-motivated model that being rolled out by publishing companies to make sure their materials are in the hands of students and being used in courses. Ultimately, because the impact on faculty and students in the classroom or taking a course can be similar at the point of use, sometimes OERs and Inclusive Access can be confused – but as the landscape continues to change and new technologies are developed, it will be important for librarians to be able to make the case for OERs and distinguish the two models for faculty. Studies continue to come out detailing the benefits of differing models – but the nature of OERs and their ability, generally, to be adapted, allows for students and faculty to be constantly engaging and creating new learning materials, while the same cannot be said for Inclusive Access which continues to stir concerns about transparency and overall cost.
Relatedly, Messina College recently opened its doors with a new associate’s degree program. Part of the promise of the program is the commitment to providing one-hundred first generation, high financial need students an opportunity to pursue an associate’s degree at Boston College. And indeed, as a part of this program, the costs of the textbooks and resources like laptops will be paid in advance. In this case, however, the university itself is footing the bill for the resources, without passing the burden of payment on to the students – certainly an exciting move towards a more equitable landscape on the part of the university!
