Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports has made two major changes for the 2023 release. The first is that it has greatly expanded the number of journals receiving a Journal Impact Factor, or “JIF”. (Journal Impact Factor is a calculation of the number citations to a journal in the last two years divided by the number of citable items from those two years.) Journals in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and the Emerging Sources Citation Index are now covered. This year those journals only receive a number; next year Clarivate will also include rankings based on the newly covered journals’ JIF against others in its category. Interestingly, the newly covered journals are ranked this year by another metric, the Journal Citation Indicator, which is the average of citable items’ Category Normalized Citation Impact.
The other important big change in that JIF is only reported to one decimal place, rather than three. This cuts out some of the false precision that going to three decimals created. This also means there will be more ties. If you notice that some categories have more than a quarter of its journals in its quartile ranking, that is due to the increased number of ties between journals.
It will be interesting to see the effect of expanding JIFs into new disciplines. There is plenty of pushback to using metrics such as JIF in assessing research and researchers, though the practice continues.
In 2021, MIT Press established the Direct to Open (D2O) model as a sustainable framework that engages libraries as a way to circumvent the profit motive for academic publishing. As publishers continue to raise the prices of APCs – to the point of driving some of their own editorial staffs away – universities and libraries are trying to find more sustainable, cost efficient ways to access scholarly materials so that collection budgets are not consistently weighed down by yearly subscription, or one time purchases of articles. Under the D2O model, if enough libraries agree to purchase a package of books published that year at a certain price, all of the books in the package will be published Open Access. As the count of member libraries increases, the price for each library in turn drops. Direct to Open is also committed to equity, as the fees for participation are determined based on the library size, type, and collection budget. Boston College Libraries, as part of its support of sustainable Open Access Publishing, has participated in the program since its inception.
The increased participation of libraries in Direct to Open allows for MIT Press’ full list of scholarly monographs to be published directly to the MIT Press Direct platform. As the participation has increased, the international scale of D2O continues to grow, as the Press reached agreements with the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Konsortium der sächsischen Hochschulbibliotheken, the Council of Australian University Libraries, Jisc, SCELC, Lyrasis, and more.
The list of books which will be opened is available on the MIT Press website. While libraries participating can know their payment goes to making what would have been paywalled content open, there is also a direct benefit, as participating libraries have term access to backlist or archives materials, discounts on high-quality works that are also available for print purchase, and opens access to new MIT Press scholarly monographs and edited collections.
Dianoia recently published their 10th issue and on April 26th, held a release symposium. This event was a wonderful opportunity to hear directly from the contributing authors who came from all over the country to present on their articles. Topics included the value of greatness, the many possible interpretations of Heraclitus, and a teleological examination of Kant’s prejudices. The issue also includes an interview with Professor Gregory Field, here at Boston College.
The event was held in Stokes Auditorium and the contributing authors had a chance to present on their publications and take questions from the audience. Refreshments were also served, and there was a small reception after the event to ask more specific questions and chat with the editors and authors of the 10th issue. Dianoia has built up a global readership since its initial publication in 2012 and provides a pathway for undergraduate philosophy students to contribute to the scholarly record.
Events like these are tremendous ways to build the community around your publication. Events can help generate interest in scholars who may be future editorial boards members, reviewers, or contributing authors. For more information around everything from reserving rooms on campus to working through the editorial workflow on Open Journal Systems, the Scholarly Communications team is always here to assist with setting up and promoting a journal published through the Boston College libraries. For more information around our publishing program, reach out to ejournals@bc.edu. To find out more about Dianoia, please see their website.
Lauren Toensing discusses her paper, “Kant’s Racial and Moral Tendencies”Scholars look on as the authors discuss their pieces.Minjun Lee discusses his paper, “How Can We Reach the True Definition of Something?”Philosophy students and other audience members watch the presentation in Stokes Hall
Congratulations to Dianoia on the publication of issue #10!
“Elsevier preys on the academic community, claiming huge profits while adding little value to science.” Professor Chris Chambers makes his thoughts clear as one of the contingent of one of the over 40 leading scientists who have resigned from the editorial board of NeuroImage in response to Elsevier’s arbitrarily high costs of publication – despite the fact that, as Chambers makes clear, the company adds little value to science.
Unfortunately, while this mass-resignation sends a clear message regarding the feelings of many academics, Elsevier does not stand alone – as publishers are able to keep their profit margins extremely high just based on the current business model. Universities and Institutions sponsor research – at not cost to the publisher, academics generally sit on editorial boards, conduct reviews, and collate the issues and prepare them for publication at zero or minimal cost to the publisher; but for authors and researchers, the cost comes either in the form of consistently increasing Article Processing Charges, or subscription plans that can be unsustainable for individual researchers or labs, and often take up a massive portion of a library’s yearly acquisition budget.
NeuroImage‘s most recent cover – the current cost to publish in NeuroImage is $3450, which is more than double the average APC as of 2021.
Ultimately, despite some of the developments urging academics and publishers to support independent, open publication practices, reputations of well-known established publishers allow them to raise APCs to prices that would otherwise be completely uncompetitive and inaccessible. This mass-resignation could be the type of action that could leverage big publishers into keeping prices for publication for open access work more reasonable, as the threat of rival journals with the reputations of the new, formerly Elsevier editorial teams could present a threat to their business model.
More recently this summer, the editorial board of Elsevier’s Design Studies also left the journal in mass in response to removal of the editor-in-chief Peter Lloyd, fairly nakedly in response to his resistance to rapidly increasing the amount of articles accepted by the journal each month. One of the editors involved in the walkout, Linden Ball, who is a board member and professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, reported that board members were “‘appalled’ by Elsevier’s decision to remove Lloyd.” He continued to Inside Higher Ed, “‘This focus on the quantity of published articles rather than their quality appears to be purely motivated by a desire for large profits.‘”
In a moment where the future modes of publication and the ethics of those modes are constantly being scrutinized, the editorial boards of journals published by Elsevier and companies like it hold unique power in there ability to shut down production and point authors and editors to methods of publishing that are more equitable and accessible; motivated by the reputations of the editors and authors involved, rather than the profit motive of a large publishing company.
In June of 2023, the National Information Standard’s Organization (NISO) published a set of standard terminology for peer-review. The standards cover a variety of topics mostly pertaining to how reviewers can refer to their interactions specifically and clearly. In 2020, a BioMed Central article was published citing common confusion around the use of the term “double-blind” due to its being vague and unspecific. This study concluded, that among other things, “the term ‘double-blind’ (and its derivatives, single- and triple-blind, fully blind, and partially blind or masked) has no standard or widely accepted definition. Agreement about which groups are blinded is poor, and authors using these terms often do not identify which groups were blinded, despite specific reporting guidelines to the contrary” (Lang, Stroup; 2020). In order to combat this, NISO working groups and committees have come together to publish standard definitions that should be observed in order to portray a journal’s peer-review process as explicitly and clearly as possible. The table below addresses a more specific, and sensitive, way to address the different levels of anonymity in a review.
Type
Description
all identities visible
Reviewer identity is visible to author, author identity is visible to reviewer, reviewer and author identity is visible to (decision-making) editor
single anonymized
Reviewer identity is not made visible to author, author identity is visible to reviewer, reviewer and author identity is visible to (decision-making) editor
double anonymized
Reviewer identity is not made visible to author, author identity is not made visible to reviewer, reviewer and author identity is visible to (decision-making) editor
triple anonymized
Reviewer identity is not made visible to author, author identity is not made visible to reviewer, reviewer & author identity is not made visible to (decision-making) editor
With more clearly defined terminology, readers can be more informed about precisely what type of review was carried out to publish an article of interest. The set of standards also included a suggested set of metadata pertaining to the review process that it is always good to be sure to collect. This list included dates of submission, acceptance, and publication; whether the submission was “fast-tracked;” the number of reviewers involved, the number of revision rounds, and disclosure of what technical tools were used in the review process.
