Independent, Publicly Funded Journals Adhering to Platinum Open Access Are the Future of Responsible Scholarly Publishing

"Addressing the gap between advanced and emerging research communities cannot be achieved only by implementation in emerging communities of the practices generated in an advanced environment. Due to the time delay of acceptance and adaptation of these practices, even if they would be systematically applied, the gap would still grow. Subsequently, the only way to close the gap would be to apply a disruptive approach using advantages already present in emerging communities which would propel them by fast tracking even beyond the level of the current world leaders. These disruptive advantages grow in the cradle of emerging communities asking to be recognized and utilized. One of the advantages aimed at knowledge production is indeed the publishing model of independent journals supported by public money based on platinum open access. Being free of dependence on financial contribution from the authors, they can indeed concentrate on increasing ethical standards and scrutinizing submitted manuscripts at a higher standard. The latter would depend on the quality of reviewers. However seeing a higher purpose, reviewers would eventually move away from providing their free services to pro-profit businesses, and rather, move towards non-profit, community based, and ethically justified efforts, which we refer to here as responsible scholarly publishing. Without the intention to replace the current massive operations of major commercial publishers, the small, independent and publicly funded journals outside of mainstream business, could represent a “craft-beer revolution” in academic publishing, becoming carefully curated arts and crafts for presenting new knowledge."