The Scholarly Communications team had a chance to ask some questions to the editors of the Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College! The undergraduate journal is sponsored by the Institute for Liberal Arts here on campus and has been in publication since its first volume in 2015. Recently, the journal has moved its online editions to Boston College Libraries’ Open Journal Systems platform iteration, which ensures that the journal will be preserved and search engine results optimized.
What kinds of pieces are generally solicited? How do you approach your call for submissions?
A variety of pieces! We accept short stories, poems, works of art, photographs, research papers, narratives etc. We usually post on our Facebook page (@BostonCollegeMedicalHumanitiesJournal) when we are accepting submissions with instructions on how to submit!
From what disciplines do most of your submissions come from – where do most of your articles come from?
Our journal is very interdisciplinary so we receive submissions from a variety of disciplines! Although the journal is based on medicine and the humanities field, we receive and publish submissions ranging from Biology and sociology to majors in CSOM.
What was the main motivation for adding your journal to our digital collection on OJS?
With the difficulties of the pandemic and reduced physical interactions, we thought that adding the Journal to a digital collection such as OJS would be more convenient and easily accessible to the public. Additionally, now our journals can be read anywhere and at any time – even on the go!
Is there a reason that Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College has decided to publish Open Access – was it always an OA journal?
We liked the idea of a sort of repository where a bunch of BC Journals lived and wanted to be a part of it! MHJ has always been open access, but we think that this platform will make our Journal easier to find and on an editorial level, easier to manage.
Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College’s most recent issue. Click the cover to navigate to the journal’s home on our Open Journal Systems platform.
In 2023, the American Library Association published Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge; discussing the current landscape for for librarians in academia and including case studies and a more modern definition for scholarly communications. Chapter two focuses particularly on open access and new thoughts and projects around open data and open educational materials. As Boston College Libraries continue to publish open access journals and maintains the open access publishing fund, it is always good to reflect on the larger picture and try to get a sense of the popularity of open access publishing as librarians and scholars continue to think of it as a means of a more equitable publishing model, and a more diverse and inclusive scholarly record.
Once a buzzy, cutting edge model of publishing, open access publications and models have become more common over the past two decades – for good reason. With increased accessibility and generally author-friendly licensing agreements, more and more academic libraries and scholars are seeing the benefits of publishing their work in an open access. However, as more and more researchers, universities, librarians, etc. are growing familiar with open access models, further definitions that encourage wider and more proactive dissemination are being more popular. The generally accepted definition is that open access materials are freely accessible to their readers – no paywall or subscription stands between the content and the prospective reader.
This chapter, however, begins by discussing the UNESCO definition, which goes further:
A publication is considered in Open access if:
its content is universally and freely accessible, at no cost to the reader, via the Internet or otherwise;
the author or copyright owner irrevocably grants to all users, for an unlimited period, the right to use, copy, or distribute the article, on condition that proper attribution is given;
it is deposited, immediately, in full and in a suitable electronic form, in at least one widely and internationally recognized open access repository committed to open access.
Going beyond being freely accessible, this definition includes the submission to an “internationally recognized open access repository committed to open access,” a definition that poses itself directly across from larger publishers continuing to try to use open models as a means of increasing their profitability. While perhaps a bit optimistic for now, chapter author Amy Buckland discusses the implications of allocating resources for more permanent, purposefully open repositories; including machine readability as a part of open publication models; and considering more critically large publishers role in their ability to bolster their own reputations as far as being, “open” despite being the driving force behind paywall and subscription models. As different consortia and coalitions of universities and university libraries begin to create repositories themselves and become less reliant on the likes of Elsevier and Springer to provide access to cutting edge scholarly content, there could be a struggle as universities and their researchers begin to develop leverage as they enter their annual negotiations for subscription deals with these same publishers.
The chapter continues discussing some of the nuances of open access – making clear that not everything should be open access just because of the technological capabilities; privacy is still an important part of publications, particularly if they might contain personal information. Digitizing everything librarians are able to legally digitize might not consider artists or subjects consent as far as the scope of publication prior to a digitized era – and indeed, librarians and practitioners ought to take heed of these pitfalls. Tara Robertson details the experience of finding exotic digitized materials from the 60s, 70s, and 80s whose subjects might not have been able to anticipate the ability of future generations to digitize the pages printed at that time.
Charlotte Roh also contributes a polemic discussion of the role that open access models play in our capitalist society – and points fairly squarely at the role not only large publishers play in maintaining the hegemonic societal norms, but also institutional complicity in this role, and even the pernicious use of open access to effectively sugar-coat the bitter pill of massive publisher monopolies dictating the market for scholarly publication as they search for ways to maintain profitability.
All in all, as the landscape and technology for developing open access models continues to shift, it is essential that librarians grapple with the effects and limits of open access publications as they become more and more popular; thinking about how to limit barriers for students and scholars at our universities, while ensuring the safety and privacy of authors or subjects in current and historical publications.
Earlier this year, the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication (C4DISC) held their first community meeting. The main mission of the coalition is “to work with organizations and individuals to build equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communication.” The coalition officially launched in 2020 – and January’s meeting was in fact the coalition’s very first community meeting. Among its members and partners, the coalition boasts Crossref, the Library Publishing Coalition, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and more. As the push for more equitable models of publishing continues to be at the forefront of the minds of scholars and librarians, best practices around diversity, inclusion, and accessibility will lay a key foundation in assuring that scholarly publishing is not only published and consumed by the most privileged layers of our society.
To provide some context as the meeting started, coalition members presented on some of the priorities and outcomes from the past year – including toolkits and surveys developed by the coalition as a means of getting librarians and scholarly publishing practitioners thinking about their own roles in creating a more diverse scholarly record. Thee were also tools to help proactively change the culture around scholarly publishing so that marginalized voices can be centered, rather than continually obscured.
As the coalition continues to hold larger community meetings and launches its communities of practice, librarians and practitioners can start to think about best practices for ensuring diverse, equitable, and inclusive academic publishing that highlights marginalized voices and works as seminal parts of a collection or publishing portfolio.
Toolkits
As a means of providing helpful ways for institutions to build more equitable diverse models for themselves, the Coalition provides links to toolkits that have been put together by leaders in publishing and higher education.
In addition to the Toolkits above, the coalition is also currently working on an Equity on Editorial Boards toolkit – a resource that will aim to assist journal and editorial managers in figuring out the best ways to ensure an attitude and editorial board that reflects a global population.
Surveys
In addition to the toolkits, the Coalition also provides links to the 2018 and 2023 Workplace Equity Surveys. While the results and analysis from the 2023 is still being published, an article from Learned Publishing gets into some of the details from the 2018 survey.
On January 1st of each year, different cultural artifacts entire the public domain due to the expiration of their copyright – and indeed, 2024 is no different – as books, musical composition, plays, movies and more produced in the year 1928 find their way into the public domain, which means they are free to use and reference without having to acquire copyright permissions. Of course, if an author references or uses an artifact in the public domain, they should be sure to cite it, but items in the public domain are no longer constricted by any copyright law.
The 95 years rule is not a given, however, as Congress has determined this number based on finding a balance between protecting author and publisher rights during the course of their lives, and ensuring that important artistic and cultural artifacts are – after due time – able to be accessed more freely, rather than rotting away behind permissions paywalls or other copyright constrictions. And some types of content are protected for longer – sounds recordings, for instance, are currently released to the public domain after 100 years, but recordings produced between 1947 and 1956, protection will last 110 years. Since the first copyright laws were established, the trend has been to extend the time of protection in order to protect authors rights – the argument could be made, however, that this protected period is perhaps too lengthy, as it is certainly much longer than an average lifespan. The chart below shows the timelines produced by the differing copyright acts of their respective moments.
Tom Bell chart showing US copyright term over time created for Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg
In 2024, while sound recordings may be protected – there is a great deal to welcome into the public domain. Joining the public domain – among other items – are JM Barrie’s Peter Pan play, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Charlie Chaplin’s silent film The Circus. Additionally, while the sound recording has not yet hit the public domain, the lyrics and music to Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do it, Let’s Fall in Love” have also entered into the public domain. And while Winnie the Pooh has been in the public domain for the past two years, he will now be joined by his longtime friend from the Hundred Acre Wood, as Tigger was introduced in The House at Pooh Corner, which was published in 1928.
As a result of some famous character and stories coming into the public domain, new artistic reproductions are taken up without having to pay for copyright permissions. As a result some very interesting titles have been released, including Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and Mickey’s Mouse Trap, a pair of horror movies that certainly bring an alternative experience to the beloved characters. And indeed, the impact of cultural artifacts hitting the public domain means more than new inspired slasher films – items on the public domain are useable in teaching materials without the burden of securing copyright to acquire full versions of texts. Scholars can more readily and fully study bodies of work that are in the public domain without incurring expenses, which enhances the global scholarly discourse and allows for seminal work from our cultural past to freely accessible to those interested in studying it – and indeed, on the flip side, if copyright laws continue to get stronger, the ability for scholars and and librarians to make use of assets will be continually diminished in favor of protecting the copyrights for authors and creators who indeed deserve their due – but are more than likely passed on.
For more information on the public domain, please consult the resources below:
Part of participating in an evolving society is the recognition that there indeed exists inequality between people on the basis of their identity. As certain groups are afforded more opportunities, or as the culture shapes itself around a set of particular experiences, it becomes the work of those who strive for equity and equality to think about the ways in which our society perpetuates cycles of oppression and systems of power. Though academia sometimes enjoys a reputation for being generally progressive, without intentionally thinking about how our institutions can better serve marginalized identities, it is inevitable that inequality and inequity will continue to grow further systemic roots.
As a counter to this, the University of California recently published a post detailing some of the ways that inequality impacts the production and publication of scholarly articles, and how that in turn can contribute to an even more inequitable and unequal academic space. To inform people of some of the pitfalls that normally befall scholarly communications groups and academic publishers, the post highlights a few areas of the publication process, how they may currently contribute to growing inequality, and how scholarly communications professionals can address and hopefully correct some of these practices now and in the future.
Additionally, a little over a year ago, the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication produced their Guidelines on Inclusive Language and Images in Scholarly Communication. The guidelines cover best practices around avoiding implicit biases in writing, covering topics such as crime and incarceration with objectivity and care, ensuring images are accessible to all readers, and much more. Among its members, the coalition has OASPA, the Library Publishing Coalition, the Association of University Presses, the Council of Science editors and others. As many different organizations fight for more open models of publishing, libraries will continue to have a leading role to play in ensuring their collections reflect the full community of the world around us – and supporting independent publishers that may not have access to systemic privileges and massive contracts is an important step in building a fuller, more complete scholarly discourse.
