Questions about the development of open access journals which charge authors | Rumor

"As I have mentioned above, I fully recognize that there is a serious need of new journals, in particular for emerging scientific fields, in order to ease the pressure on existing journals. However, there are many different editorial models and the APC « gold path » is not the only one. France is probably particularly lucky because the early mobilisation of researchers from social sciences and humanities, and the support of the CNRS and of several universities have allowed the rise of a publishing ecosystem making full use of digital technologies to support open-access journals. Hence most journals either remain under a classical subscriber system (but less expensive than in the anglophone publishing industry), or under a system, in which the cost of editorial staff and system maintenance is borne by the universities and the CNRS (the OpenEdition platform is a case in point, but there are other instances). Similar solutions, even if not as widespread as in France, also exist in other European countries and in South America . In my field of research, I think of ACME, a journal of critical geographies, and of Geographica Helvetica, where the cost are supported by several Swiss academic institutions, or the Italian journal of political sociology Partizipatione e Conflitto (PACO), just to name a few. These solutions rely on the strong involvement of academic communities and the support of the national and local academic institutions. Apparently, this kind of solutions are not as developed in the anglophone academic world. I wonder if this can be explained by the fact that researchers are more pressured to invest their time and energy to gain research contracts through competition, and are less available for community led journal projects, which require cooperative practices. It is true that researchers are not editors, publishers nor IT specialists and they should not waste time when efficient publishing solutions exist. However, the drive towards the APC journals bear with it many shortcomings. Collective, cooperative and at least more prudent attitudes are needed to avoid to spring in without further reflection...."