Is peer review in academic publishing still working?

Peer review is central to academic publishing. Yet for many it is a mysterious and contentious practice, which can cause distress for both reviewers and those whose work is reviewed. This paper, produced by the Editors Collective, examines the past and future of peer review in academic publishing. The first sections consider how peer review has been defined and practised in changing academic contexts, and its educational significance in the development of scholarship. The paper then explores major historical and contemporary issues around identity, diversity, anonymity, and the review process, and the related power of editors versus reviewers in academic publishing. Finally, the paper discusses the case of new scholars as reviewers engaging in neoliberal labour, before concluding with some brief recommendations based on our analysis.

“Publication is the hard currency of science. It is the primary yardstick for establishing priority of discovery, making the status of a publication a critical factor in resolving priority disputes or intellectual property claims.” (International Working Group, 2000) Nurse authors, especially those just starting out with publishing their work, may be unsure about which type of publication it is best to aim for. The purpose of this article is to assist in making this choice. The objective is to show what makes a publication scholarly, what an editor looks for when deciding to publish an article, and lastly the peer review process. This will help nurse authors to decide whether a peer-reviewed publication is the appropriate place for their articles, and the process used by editors when deciding whether to accept articles. ‘Scholarly publishing is a communicative practice within a community’ and ‘an activity engaged in by scholars who primarily want their reports to be widely read and credited by their target audience’ (Kling and McKim 1999 p.890). Scholarly publication is a social process, not an activity undertaken in isolation, as often other scholars review, test and critique the information presented. As Borgman (2000 p. 412) explained, ‘research in all fields is incomplete until it is validated through review processes and shared with others‘. Scholarly publication is most often divided into three stages: first, informal communication, which now occurs largely through the use of electronic media (Gabbay, 2000); second, the initial public dissemination of research through conferences and proceedings, and finally, formal publication i.e. in journals or books, chapters in books, articles, on-line formal and public proceedings, most of which are peer-reviewed (Graham, 2000). These formal publications are often the result of extensive review of literature (meta-analysis), personal clinical experiences (case studies) or rigorous research. As they seek opportunities to publish their work, scholars may find it difficult to determine which source is the best especially in terms of what is scholarly and what is not (Rozenzweiz, 1999). There are three key ways to identify a scholarly publication. The first question to ask is: Who does the writing? In a scholarly publication the writing of the manuscript is done by a scholar/researcher in the field. They have the education and credentials that assure the reader that they have the knowledge to write on the topic. The scholar/researcher is reporting on the results of work for which they are responsible. In more popular publications some of the writing may be done by a staff writer, who is most often a professional reporter or a journalist. They interview others and report information learned. They have not done the research or the review or experienced the clinical case study, but instead report on work done by someone other than themselves. Some of the writing may also be done by nurses, but in a more reader-friendly and less academic style that will appeal to busy practitioners who do not have the time or confidence to read scholarly journals. However, these popular publications often publish information that is based on research or other types of evidence and can be used to develop or improve practice. Examples of such popular nursing publications are Nursing Times in the UK, Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners in the USA and Australian Electronic Journal of Nursing Education (AEJNE) in Australia. The second question to ask is: Who are the readers? Scholarly publications are intended to be read by other scholars interested in the same field or discipline. Nurse educators also draw on these kinds of publications for their teaching, and recommend them on reading lists for their students. More popular publications are intended to be read by general readers. The articles often omit features that a researcher would want to know, such as statistics or probability information, and focus more on the ‘take home message’ or practical implications of the topic. The third question to ask is: Is the publication peer reviewed? Manuscripts submitted to scholarly publications are sent for review to other scholars or researchers who have expertise in the topic discussed. These reviewers critique the manuscript and make recommendations on whether or not it should be published. This process is called peer review and is extremely important in determining whether the manuscript is noteworthy. It will determine if the manuscript is appropriate for their publication and if it meets the rigor expected of articles published. As mentioned above, peer review is the key to determining whether a manuscript is scholarly or not. Before a manuscript can be published in most scientific journals, it must be reviewed by colleagues (“peers”) who are experts in the topic written about in the manuscript. Peer review is a method of providing a system of determining quality of material to be published and assuring readers that the information they read is reliable and valid – worth their attention and time. Why is peer review so important? In this process, each article undergoes “blind” or anonymous review by a group of “peers” (scholars with similar expertise and education). These “peers” are the experts, scholars and colleagues of those who themselves write articles and books, and are often university professors. Most peer reviewers have extensive publishing experience on the research or topic on which the article or book focuses. “Blind” peer review is the most reliable and valid form of peer review process because the reviewers do not know the authors' names or university affiliations. This protects the reviewers' ability to give constructive criticism without fear of reprisal from an offended author (Scarry 1991). Authors benefit from the blind review in that, if a manuscript is poorly written, their careers are not jeopardized because the reviewers would have no means of identifying who the authors are. After the peer reviewers have completed their reviews, they are forwarded to the author with recommendations that the manuscript is ready for publication as it stands (very rarely); the manuscript is suitable for publication if certain modifications can be made, questions answered and any errors corrected; or the manuscript is not suitable for publication and has been rejected. The manuscript may be suitable for publication but does not fit the particular focus of the journal, and the reviewers or editor may suggest submitting it to a different journal. Only in the first two cases will the manuscript reach print, and in the second it will probably be returned to the reviewers for another round of scrutiny before actual acceptance for publication. This is what makes peer-reviewed scholarly publications so valuable. Choosing the most appropriate scholarly publication is vital to an author's publishing success. As well as the points discussed in this article, an early step is to check out possible journals by looking at hard copies in an academic library or by going to journals' websites. These websites will also take you to each journal's author guidelines, which need to be applied as closely as possible to improve the articles chances of success. Jacqueline Rhoads PhD, ACNP-BC, ANP-C, CCRN is a Professor, Director, Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Program, Louisiana State University Health Science Center, School of Nursing, New Orleans, USA.

Peer review on the Internet: A better class of conversation

INTRODUCTION Peer-review practices in scholarly publishing are changing. Digital publishing mechanisms allow for open peer review, a peer review process that discloses author and reviewer identities to one another. This model of peer review is increasingly implemented in scholarly publishing. In science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, open peer review is implemented in journal publishing processes, and, in the humanities and social sciences, it is often coupled with new scholarship practices, such as the digital humanities. This article reports findings from an exploratory study on peer-review and publishing practices in Library and Information Science (LIS), focusing on LIS’s relationships with open peer review. METHODS Editors of LIS journals were surveyed regarding journal peer review and publishing practices. RESULTS This article reports the general “pulse” of attitudes and conversations regarding open peer review and discusses its challenges in LIS. Results show an ideological split between traditionally-published journals and open access and association-affiliated journals. Open access and association-affiliated journal editors are more likely to consider investigating open peer review. DISCUSSION The LIS community of journal editors, authors, reviewers, and readers need to discuss open peer review as well as experiment with it. Experiments with open peer review in scholarly LIS publishing will inform our praxis as librarians.

Open peer review (OPR) is a cornerstone of the emergent Open Science agenda. Yet to date no large-scale survey of attitudes towards OPR amongst academic editors, authors, reviewers and publishers has been undertaken. This paper presents the findings of an online survey, conducted for the OpenAIRE2020 project during September and October 2016, that sought to bridge this information gap in order to aid the development of appropriate OPR approaches by providing evidence about attitudes towards and levels of experience with OPR. The results of this cross-disciplinary survey, which received 3,062 full responses, show the majority (60.3%) of respondents to be believe that OPR as a general concept should be mainstream scholarly practice (although attitudes to individual traits varied, and open identities peer review was not generally favoured). Respondents were also in favour of other areas of Open Science, like Open Access (88.2%) and Open Data (80.3%). Among respondents we observed high levels of experience with OPR, with three out of four (76.2%) reporting having taken part in an OPR process as author, reviewer or editor. There were also high levels of support for most of the traits of OPR, particularly open interaction, open reports and final-version commenting. Respondents were against opening reviewer identities to authors, however, with more than half believing it would make peer review worse. Overall satisfaction with the peer review system used by scholarly journals seems to strongly vary across disciplines. Taken together, these findings are very encouraging for OPR’s prospects for moving mainstream but indicate that due care must be taken to avoid a “one-size fits all” solution and to tailor such systems to differing (especially disciplinary) contexts. OPR is an evolving phenomenon and hence future studies are to be encouraged, especially to further explore differences between disciplines and monitor the evolution of attitudes.

JID Innovations and Peer Review

Using preprints in evidence synthesis: Commentary on experience during the COVID-19 pandemic

A Tool for Reviewers

Open peer review, peer review where authors' and reviewers' identities are disclosed to one another, is a growing trend in scholarly publishing. Through observation of four journals in STEM disciplines, PLOS One, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, PeerJ, and F1000Research, an observational overview is conducted. The overview relies on defined characteristics of open peer review. Results show that despite differing open peer review implementations, each journal retains editorial involvement in scholarly publishing. Further, the analysis shows that only one of these implementations is fully transparent in its peer review and decision making process. Finally, the overview contends that journals should clearly outline peer review and editorial processes in order to allow for open peer review to be better understood and adopted by authors, reviewers, editors, and readers of science communications.

Open peer review, peer review where authors' and reviewers' identities are disclosed to one another, is a growing trend in scholarly publishing. Through observation of four journals in STEM disciplines, PLoS One, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, PeerJ, and F1000Research, an observational overview is conducted. The overview relies on defined characteristics of open peer review. Results show that despite differing open peer review implementations, each journal retains editorial involvement in scholarly publishing. Further, the analysis shows that only one of these implementations is fully transparent in its peer review and decision making process. Finally, the overview contends that journals should clearly outline peer review and editorial processes in order to allow for open peer review to be better understood and adopted by authors, reviewers, editors, and readers of science communications.

Open peer review, peer review where authors' and reviewers' identities are disclosed to one another, is a growing trend in scholarly publishing. Through observation of four journals in STEM disciplines, PLOS One, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, PeerJ, and F1000Research, an observational overview is conducted. The overview relies on defined characteristics of open peer review. Results show that despite differing open peer review implementations, each journal retains editorial involvement in scholarly publishing. Further, the analysis shows that only one of these implementations is fully transparent in its peer review and decision making process. Finally, the overview contends that journals should clearly outline peer review and editorial processes in order to allow for open peer review to be better understood and adopted by authors, reviewers, editors, and readers of science communications.

This editorial describes some of the current and emerging challenges in peer review for the academic publishing system. Peer review is a fundamental element of academic research and publishing, with a firm reliance on the global scholarly community to perform gatekeeping and filtering processes in pursuing high-quality and high-value scholarly publications: the “gold standard” in academic publishing. We begin with examples of several contemporary challenges the peer review system poses, including impartiality and bias, academic reward structures, fake peer reviews, and reviewer fatigue. To further understand these challenges, we then provide a brief history of the evolution of the peer review system, focusing on the traditional forms of pre-publication peer review so familiar to the communication of scholarly work. Against this backdrop, we consider the benefits of peer review that span the continuum of the academic community – from authors to reviewers to journals and research communities. But many traditional forms of peer review are being challenged by new and innovative processes, systems and platforms. Finally, we look at how others have re-envisioned the peer review process during this phase of rapid evolution in journal publishing, with a strong call for quality and integrity in writing peer reviews. We conclude by suggesting ways forward for embedding sustainability, equity, and respect within the peer review process as an active force for advancing scholarship.

Evening trails by Brian Smithson. Shared from https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithser/10709730483/ under a CC BY 2.0 license Peer Review involves several divergent groups. Authors, who wish to see the results of scrupulous work published, in the anticipation of career promotion or secure funding. Editors, who are under pressure to identify sound and novel research. Reviewers, who try to fit a thoughtful and time-consuming process within busy schedules, often receiving no credit for it. And Publishers, who compete in a transforming landscape of fast and abundant science publishing. But has Peer Review always been as challenging as it is nowadays? Some might argue so, though phrases such as 'Publish or Perish', or the 'Impact Factor rat race' are relatively new additions to a Researcher's vocabulary. Moreover, the frequently observed focus of science policies on short-term goals and the publication speed enabled or even imposed by our information age are all new variables. Worryingly, advances in online handling systems have actually enabled author and reviewer misconduct, as in the recent case of 101 papers that went through fake peer review according to the Ministry of Science and Technology of China [1]. This scenery is by no means comparable to the scientific landscape of 1960s when regular Peer Review was first introduced by journals [2, 3]. Although several changes have been introduced to the Peer Review system to address current challenges, the Peer Review Process has been until recently preserved in its primary version: metadata on Peer Review efficiency have been scarcely available; implementation of emerging technologies to detect issues such as inappropriate statistical analysis, figure manipulation and data fabrication has been limited; Peer Reviewers lack systematic training on conducting constructive and ethical peer review; and incentives for performing high-quality peer review are often scarce. However, this scenery is now changing, and the first steps towards Peer Review modernization have already been made! The realization that systematic research on Peer Review needs to be conducted is growing. Already in July 2017, Carole J. Lee and David Moher, philosophers specializing in Publication Science at the University of Washington and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, respectively, published in Science a call for promoting scientific integrity via research on Peer Review [4]. Lee and Moher call Publishers to enable the opening of what they name 'the black box of peer review'. They highlight the need for large systematic experimental studies to assess the various peer review practices and improve quality and transparency. Going a step further, they present incentives for Publishers to adopt new software systems for assisting Peer Review, evaluating Peer Review Efficiency and producing metadata on, for example, reviewer scores and comments linked to manuscript content, or reviewer expertise and affiliations. The suggested incentives are hard to ignore: taking into consideration the persisting plea to de-emphasize impact factor, as well as the need to exclude predatory journals, introduction of indicators for Peer Review transparency will soon gain momentum. The wide application of indicators for Peer Review transparency would provide strong incentives for a Publishers' initiative to support research that improves the quality of the Peer Review process. Such a collective initiative could even be supported through updating the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines to facilitate journal meta-research. One might argue that this is yet another idealistic call. However, reality might disprove them. The upcoming International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication, which was launched by JAMA and BMJ back in 1986 to encourage systematic research on Peer Review [5, 6], features a rich programme on metadata analysis, and will host several journal editors and publisher representatives. This is only an indication that the community is responsive to the general need for metadata analysis of Peer Review. In addition, the implementation of Open Peer Review by several publishers increases metadata availability. Through Open Peer Review the identities of both Authors and Reviewers are made public upon manuscript acceptance, often along with the Peer Review reports. EMBO Press journals and Nature Communications publish reviewer reports along with manuscripts on an optional basis [7, 8]. Similarly, BMJ [9], F1000Research [10] and about 70 journals from BioMed Central [11], all use variable models of Open Peer Review but share a common feature: they publish reviewer reports and names alongside the published article. In addition, Publishers are engaging in lively discussions on the future of Peer Review. For example, in 2016, BioMed Central and Digital Science organized a 1-day conference, the SpotOn London event, at which participants actively discussed 'what peer review might look like in 2030'. This event led to the production of an informative report [12], and will hopefully help trigger more discussions, when repeated later this year. In parallel, Chris Graf, Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics Director at Wiley, has recently indicated openness to change: 'our plan at Wiley […] includes continuous work […] to collect and record data on trends [and] Editorial initiatives and experiments designed to improve transparency and openness, and thus reproducibility. We are pleased to be an organizational signatory to the TOP guidelines. We publish several journals – the European Journal of Neuroscience in particular – that are leading proponents for 'two-stage' peer review adopted in the Registered Reports model. We will continue to encourage and support journals that experiment with this model, and others like it' [13]. So, it seems that publishers are ready for a change. Most importantly, they are not alone in this effort. Policy makers also seem to recognize the need for systematic research on Peer Review. For example, the EU has initiated the COST Action 'PEERE: New frontiers of peer review'. PEERE is a multidisciplinary international project running from 2014 to 2018 that involves quantitative and qualitative research on how peer review is conducted, seeking to make evidence-based recommendations for improving the current system. Thorough Peer Review seems to obstruct fast publication and vice versa. However, when it comes to time limitations faced by both Reviewers and Journal Editors, several emerging technologies can lend a helping hand. Some Publishers have already integrated technologies to waterproof the Peer Review Process: AAAS has recently launched a new web-based service, Peer Review Evaluation (PRE), that ensures adherence to journal Peer-Review policy, excluding fake or biased reports [14]. Probably most people engaged in Publishing have heard of Crossref, a web-based tool widely used to detect plagiarism issues, among other purposes. Similar technologies already exist to screen manuscripts for statistical credibility, image integrity and, even, data fabrication. Penelope was first conceived by its creator James Harwood as a web-based tool that would assist authors to adhere to guidelines when preparing a manuscript [15]. Upon collaboration with the equator network, the startup company Penelope Research has developed a product that might transform the future of Peer Review. Penelope is presently available to Publishers for checking manuscripts during submission. The checking includes, among others, the presence of appropriate formatting, the figure and table legends, references, or ethical statements. Importantly, Penelope checks for proper statistical analysis and can identify cases in which raw data of a manuscript had been previously published elsewhere. StatReviewer has recently emerged as another promising tool to assist the review of manuscripts for statistical soundness. It uses machine learning to control adherence to widely accepted statistical and methodological guidelines, such as CONSORT 2010. StatReviewer is currently being evaluated in an initial pilot study involving four clinical BioMed Central journals [16]. Would these developments mean that we are heading towards a fully automated Peer-Review system? As Chadwick C. DeVoss, Founder and President of StatReviewer argues in the 2016 SpotOn London report, 'this is where a slippery slope gets extra slippery' [12]. A fully-automated publishing line would only undermine exchange and communication between researchers. On the contrary, the aim here is solely to implement emerging technologies as a helping tool that will leave authors and reviewers valuable time for rewarding interactions. Researchers are being thoroughly trained for conceiving a project and experimenting in a wet or dry lab. Most postgraduate students also receive regular training on writing a manuscript and preparing scientific presentations. But what about conducting Peer Review? Considering the major impact of reviewing quality on scholarly publishing, minimal concerted efforts have been so far invested on training good Reviewers. With advice mainly restricted to journal guidelines and some editorials, budding Peer Reviewers seem to be in need of more support when expected to produce a good referee report. More than that, there is still an open debate on whether young PostDocs should be given the possibility for getting some hands-on experience with Peer Review. Lack of opportunities for young scientists to train on supervised Peer Review is rather unfortunate given the fact that most are open to both expanding their expertise and investing time on a scientific exchange as rewarding as Peer Review. Yet, both individual journal initiatives and a new platform dedicated to Peer Review have set the goal of changing this scenery. For example, the Genetics Society of America has just initiated a pilot programme for training reviewers on the 'principles, purposes, and best practices of Peer Review'. Other Publishers opt for providing online packages with Peer Review training Material, including Webinars, as is the case with the Wiley Peer Review training. Going one step further, Publons, a platform focusing on Peer Review and aimed at Authors, Reviewers, Editors and Publishers alike, has developed the Publons Academy, a practical Peer Review training course for early career researchers. Publons Academy not only provides extensive material on evaluating novelty, methods, results, conclusions and ethical integrity in a manuscript but also enables supervised postpublication Peer Review. Experienced Reviewers are encouraged to sign up as supervisors and get acknowledged for this role. Acknowledgement is actually the groundbreaking component that has already earned Publons a constantly growing community of Reviewers, Editors and Journals. Reviewers get credit for every single report they prepare (even when the manuscript does not get accepted for publication). This sole fact is crucial for transforming Peer Review: as indicated in a survey conducted by Wiley, four of five researchers agree that reviewing is not sufficiently acknowledged by journals and research institutions [17]. With the ambition to transform this landscape, Publons provides credit, in the form of a verified peer review record, that can be considered as credential during internal institute evaluations, or at job and grant applications. The provision of such incentives may help to build a universal reviewer database. Such a database would assist journals to expand their pool of Reviewers that currently seems to be biased towards senior, male, American and European researchers, and is by no means representative of the current researcher and author demographics. Several developments occurring in parallel seem to steer towards a brand new future for the Peer-Review process. Whether this is an optimistic or realistic view, we are all to find out soon. But what are the actual views of researchers on burning questions about Peer Review transparency, quality and recognition? In times of change, it is essential for the main players to become vocal and put forward criticism and suggestions for solution. How do Reviewers view models of open Peer Review to ensure transparency? Do Authors and Reviewers welcome the use of emerging technologies as a part of the peer review process for the sake of faster publication? What do they consider as nonreplaceable values of nonautomated Peer Review? Do Authors profit from Peer Review more than is generally admitted and acknowledged? How do early career investigators feel about their inclusion in this system? Are senior researchers that have experienced the evolution of the Peer Review System over the past 20 years prepared to supervise younger colleagues? The debate is still on, and the more views available, the more can the system improve.

Traditionally, there have been two important media of academic publishing: scholarly journals and scholarly books. The first scholarly journal, the Journal des Sçavans, was founded by Denis de Sallo, appeared already in January 1665 in Paris, reappeared after the French Revolution as the Journal des Savants, and still exists as a leading journal in the humanities. Only a few weeks later, Henry Oldenbourg, the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, established a second scholarly journal, the Philosophical Transactions, with a focus on science. The purpose of these journals was to formalize the extensive correspondence between philosophers and scientists.1 In the 18th and the 19th century, more specialized journals gained in importance, most of which were published by learned societies. At the end of the 19th century, university presses too began to publish scholarly journals. Another traditional means of academic publishing are the various types of scholarly books, in particular monographs, edited volumes, reference works (specialist dictionaries, encyclopedias, and specialty reference manuals), and technical handbooks.2 A narrow definition of academic works would exclude textbooks and books for the broader public. Shavell (2010, 337–39) employs four criteria to determine whether a journal or book is academic in nature: (1) the authors and/or the publisher are usually academics; (2) the readers are mainly academics; (3) the content is academic in character; (4) only low royalties are paid, if any. As of today, scholarly journals are the preferred mode of academic publishing in particular in the sciences and some social sciences (e.g., economics), whereas scholarly books still play an important role in the arts, the humanities, and part of the social sciences. Whereas scholarly books are published by a large number of small national publishers in a multitude of languages, the most important scholarly journals are typically in English language and published by a few large commercial publishers. Until the mid-20th century, the most important journals were published by learned societies, before commercial publishers began to enter the academic publishing market in the 1960s and 1970s by launching new titles or acquiring existing ones. This development has led to a significant concentration of (commercial) publishers in the academic journal market.3 It is difficult to say for sure how many scholarly journals are available around the world. Some sources speak of more than 100,000, others of 87,000 or 73,000.4 In August 2018, Ulrich's Web Directory listed 33,119 active scholarly peer-reviewed English-language journals with about 3 million articles a year, complemented by an additional 9,372 journals in other languages. As an important subset, 11,655 journals with 2.2 million articles were included in the Clarivate Analytics' Journal Citation Reports (STM, 2018, 25–26). The Web of Science (WoS) database counted almost 12,500 journals in 2019 (see below, Section 2.2.1). With the mass expansion of academic education and the increasing size of faculty after World War II, publications in peer-reviewed, highly ranked journals have become an important precondition for academic careers in many disciplines, in particular in the sciences, economics, and partly in the other social sciences. In 1964, Eugene Garfield launched the Science Citation Index to calculate the impact factors of journals in science, medicine, and technology. This index was later followed by the Social Sciences Citation Index in 1973, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index in 1978 (Regazzi, 2015, 86–88), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index in 2015. These indices led to the development of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a metric that serves to rank a scholarly journal based on the number of citations to articles in that journal by articles in other indexed journals within a certain time period. During the same time, commercial publishers have increased their market shares to the detriment of non-for-profit publishers, such as learned societies and universities, becoming the dominant players in the market for scholarly journals. Today, the "big five" commercial academic publishers—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Sage—cover more than half of the market for scholarly journals. Since the 1980s, we have seen a sharp increase not just in the number of journals but in particular also in journal subscription prices, forcing many academic libraries to cancel serials subscriptions and to cut back on new monographs (the so-called serials crisis, cf. Eger & Scheufen, 2018, 23–29). These developments induced an increasing number of scholars, initially in the United States, to promote open access (OA) to scholarly articles as a replacement of or an addendum to the subscription model. After some individual initiatives in the late 1980s, the early 2000s saw the emergence of a global movement by scholars, librarians, and research sponsors, resulting in the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (February 2002), the "Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing" (June 2003) and the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" (October 2003).7 Two roads to OA can be distinguished8: First, gold OA refers to electronic journals with OA for all readers, often based on creative commons licenses. The publishers' costs are covered not by subscription fees but from other sources, such as article-processing charges (APCs)9 paid by authors, libraries, learned societies, or research sponsors, or subsidies from learned societies and other sources. Hybrid OA journals, whose numbers are rising fast, allow the authors to choose between paying an APC, thereby granting the reader OA, or not paying an APC and requiring the reader to pay for access to the article.10 A special branch of gold OA is mega-journals, the first one of which, PLOS One, was first published in 2006. In these journals, the peer review is restricted to examining only the soundness of the submitted articles but not their broader interest or impact. Also, mega-journals are not oriented towards a specific subject matter. The second road, green OA, refers to authors self-archiving pre-prints or post-prints of their papers on so-called OA repositories, potentially in addition to publication in traditional subscription-based journals. OpenDOAR listed 5,713 repositories in July 2021, of which 5,073 were classified as institutional repositories managed by universities, faculties, or other academic institutions, 364 as disciplinary (subject) repositories which aggregate research papers in specific disciplines (e.g., PubMed Central, arXiv, SSRN, and RepEc), 138 as aggregating repositories (including Academia and Scielo), and 139 as governmental repositories.11 Whereas institutional and disciplinary repositories generally respect the authors' or publishers' copyright, so-called Robin Hood or Pirate OA repositories do not. The most prominent example is Sci-Hub, founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a young scholar from Kazakhstan, which made over 60 million journal articles publicly available. Due to complaints by academic publishers, Sci-Hub had to switch domains several times.12 Recent years have seen the emergence of academic social networks such as Research Gate and Mendeley, as well as a stream of new forms of disseminating scientific content, including blogs, podcasts, and Facebook posts by prominent scholars. Regarding OA books, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in June 2021 listed 43,036 academic peer-reviewed books from 621 publishers.13 The number of academic journals, as listed in the WoS database, has been growing steadily over the past two decades, from around 5,000 in 2000 to almost 12,500 in 2019 (Figure 1).14 Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) The academic journal market is dominated by a few large commercial publishers, with the "big five" accounting for more than half of the academic journals listed by the WoS in 2019: Elsevier (1,754 journals), Springer (1,406), Wiley Blackwell (1,242), Taylor & Francis (1,199), and Sage (642).15 However, due to a downturn by Elsevier that began around 2006, this dominance has declined from around 60% in 2000 to around 51.7% in 2019 (Figure 2). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) Coupled with the advent of the internet and the concurrent increasing digitization of academic works, which through the bundling of different journals and/or formats ("big deals") facilitated second-degree price discrimination, this dominance has led to a drastic increase in subscription prices since the early 1990s (Bergstrom, 2013; Eger & Scheufen, 2018; Ramello, 2010). The resulting serials crisis—with academic libraries having to cut their journal portfolio—gave rise to a new publishing regime that offers OA to journal content. The share of pure (i.e., non-hybrid) OA journals as listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (2021) has been increasing steadily, from around 3% of all WoS-listed journals in 2000 to more than 10% in 2019 (Figure 3). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) Interestingly, pure OA journals also gained ground in terms of quality. Figure 4 shows boxplots of the impact factors16 of closed access (CA) versus OA journals over time. While CA journals enjoyed an impact factor advantage over OA journals for a long time—all location scales of the impact factor for CA journals being above the ones for OA journals—OA journals are nowadays of the same quality, notwithstanding considerable differences between disciplines (see the contribution by Eger et al. to this issue). In 2019, impact factor distributions of both OA and CA journals are at the same level. Thus, advancing both in quantity and in quality, OA journals are becoming ever more relevant. The literature has identified the following advantages of an OA regime for academic works: (1) OA publications are likely read and therefore (2) cited more widely,17 which in turn (3) raises the incentives for academic authors to publish their research results as citations increase their reputation. These observations led to a broad discussion in academia as to whether the copyright regime may impede the evolution towards a universal OA regime, with very different conclusions being drawn regarding the impact of OA from a social welfare perspective (Scheufen, 2015; Shavell, 2010). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) The growing relevance of academic OA publishing warrants a closer look at the development of pure OA journals as the gold road towards OA. Figure 5 shows the number of newly launched OA journals from 2002 to 2020. Following relatively slow growth from 2002 to 2014, with fewer than 500 new OA journals per year (except 2013), the number has exceeded 1,000 in every year since, peaking in 2017, when more than 2,000 new OA journals were added to the DOAJ database. Today, the DOAJ database counts more than 16,000 OA journals in many different fields of research, published in 80 languages by publishers from 126 countries.18 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Notwithstanding this impressive development, the relevance of OA journals varies substantially across academic disciplines (Figure 6).19 The research field with the largest attributed number of OA journals is Social Sciences (3,817), followed by Health Sciences (2,785), Technology and Engineering (1,416), and Language and Literature (1,153). By contrast, the natural science fields of Mathematics & Statistics (341), Physics & Astronomy (274), and Chemistry (181) feature only few OA journals.20 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Remarkable differences also exist regarding a variety of OA journal characteristics (Table 1).21 Most (52%) OA journals leave the copyright of published works with the author, whereas the traditional CA regime demands that the exploitation rights are transferred to the publisher. Moreover, only around 28% of all OA journals charge APCs—a remarkable finding, as the OA regime implies the transition from a "reader pays" to an "author pays" model. Other fees (e.g., a submission fee to cover the review process) are charged by only around 2% of all OA journals. Nevertheless, author fees may constitute a significant obstacle for authors to publish in an OA venue, especially for non-tenured researchers seeking to publish in highly ranked journals, which are most likely to charge APCs (Budzinski et al., 2020). This obstacle also applies in particular to many researchers from developing countries, whose institutions rarely cover such costs. Yet 18% of OA journals provide for the possibility to waive such author fees. OA publishing may indeed be considered a form of development aid, for two reasons: First, few institutions in the developing world have so far been able to subscribe to academic journals. The OA regime can thus promote scientific participation and thereby foster the global evolution of science as a "trial and error" process. Free or cheaper access to literature for researchers in the developing world tends to increase both their output (number of publications) and input (number of references) (Mueller-Langer et al., 2020). Second, an OA regime grants access to the latest results in science for groups who were previously excluded because they are not "club" members of a university library. This includes, e.g., corporate researchers, physicians, or farmers. Notwithstanding all the changes discussed above, scholarly journals remain the most important medium of communication in many disciplines. For more than 300 years, they have been fulfilling the four key functions of registration (attribution), certification of articles (peer review), dissemination (distribution, access), and preservation (scholarly memory and permanent archiving). In recent decades, a fifth function must be added: the evaluation of researchers and their institutions.22 The increasing importance of OA articles in scholarly journals has triggered some controversial discussions, in particular regarding the questions as to whether OA negatively affects the quality of journal articles, whether OA improves the dissemination of research results, and how OA affects the competition between academic publishers as well as the distribution between academics and non-academics, between poor and rich universities, and between poor and rich countries. We shall discuss each of these questions and some related points in more detail below. In times when "alternative facts" tend to trump sound research results, academia must provide the public with reliable information. The users of this information should be sufficiently certain that the results are based on proper methods, reflect the state of science in the specific field, and were obtained independently, e.g., of any political or commercial interests.23 For that reason, strict and continuous quality control of research results is a "conditio sine qua non" for academic publishing. Facilitating the communication of content from authors to readers, the academic journal market may be characterized as a two-sided market (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). While readers look for the most important research results in their fields by top authors, the latter are interested in the journal's reputation, in wide readership, and in citations. Thus, journals with high impact factors hold the greatest attraction to both sides. With this in mind, the crucial question arises what effect, if any, OA is likely to have on the quality of academic articles. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, is very skeptical regarding the quality of OA articles, especially those that are financed by APCs: "By adding a financial component to the front end of the scholarly publishing process, the open-access movement will ultimately corrupt scholarly publishing and hurt the communication and sharing of novel knowledge" (Beall, 2013, 590). A weak form of "corruption" would to OA publishers' incentives to peer review and to more submitted papers in to increase from However, the commercial publishers' incentives to increase the number of articles to the detriment of the journal's quality at the the quality the APCs that the journal is able to as well as A form of "corruption" refers to the of some OA journal publishers have been to in particular young and who on publications for their or to allow authors to publish articles in OA journals, by articles with or peer academics on their the or of journals, and so In established a of publishers, which was in January in to not only from the publishers but also from OA who that the to to OA. this quality to be a one which exists only in some disciplines (e.g., economics), whereas in other disciplines, such as some OA journals are the ranked journals and there is of a quality researchers their and if academic institutions and research to the APCs for articles by journals, this is to A by is that OA may new and will new and of their will remain (Beall, 2013, 590). However, this is a of the process, of whether the was submitted to a traditional or an OA and many prominent which that articles are generally more likely to the review than and creative but ones. In their contribution to this special & in a two-sided that OA can be a feature of journals. The have seen an increasing both of data on any subject and of that serves to that data almost there has been a of articles in every For such articles, the peer for quality A can be made between pure the same data and the same are as in the and scientific which (1) different data but the same (2) the same data but new methods, or (3) new data and new A to a on (1) the of an or in previously published (2) the impact of the (3) the of and (4) the of to publish Whereas some years when data were on the of mainly of technical copyright and data are the of Regarding the first journals in have already been including an OA journal by University with a focus on Technology and and the Journal for in by Springer the years or a number of in several disciplines have that the results of many when published in highly ranked journals, not be many academics to speak of a The is to the quality of research by access to data so as to be able to results of and or the incentives to the in the first Another important question is whether digitization and the internet have facilitated the quality of of their scholarly and and of their the quality of academic researchers and of is based on which were to provide a metric for journals with each 2019, being a of the citations to all articles in a journal but not of the citations to the individual articles. In a few articles are cited and many articles are not cited at Moreover, an may also many citations for being and citations are 2018, For some journals the authors of submitted papers to related papers that were previously published in the same journal have this by the of several journals this focus on and their to their and the of to these and to with for the quality of research & in with a a to be a (STM, 2018, are induced to the but the The on research which from the on Science and Technology in 2014, is of the existing to research output and to research evaluation in the et al., the question whether the new and the and (OA) of academic publishing to and their Some authors the in OA publishing with a broader of readers and open For of the in the focus on a small number of highly ranked journals, for a all articles that a journal's criteria should be published and made financed by APCs or other This is the of mega-journals such as PLOS a who the 2000 in and & the between of publications in the top journals in and of in a of the top which over the the crucial question is how to articles at low especially in a OA the of available articles to choose journal of costs to some However, the of the as a of quality has been Thus, an important to academic publishing is to provide reliable on the quality of journal articles that are of the journal that published the the internet and for research evaluation also how research results are Regarding scholarly by other researchers, there is an discussion as to whether OA articles more or fewer citations than those with a to that is in the by & and by Eger et al. to this special Regarding by the broader the mainly is being complemented with which on or in the social reference such as and Mendeley, scholarly blogs, and In the transition from traditional subscription journals to OA, the crucial question is how to the between two the one high subscription fees may be with high journal publishers have to their to the or research the other low APCs may not for publishers to cover their and to a to publish journals. The is to competition to journal publishers to articles of quality at and and to the interested public. The of competition not on the and of OA publishing. there were only pure OA journals, publishers would for all authors had to cover the APCs from their the APCs would tend towards a that the publishers to However, in the publishers of pure OA journals, OA journals and CA journals with OA repositories, and APCs may be by or research these different to foster OA will have specific on the of are some (1) green OA is or an to as has been the in since January 2014, publishers of subscription journals difficult to increase their fees. This also the publishers of OA journals from increasing their In any a must be is too will the publishers' to publish the journal in the first if is too the on subscription fees will be A for gold OA by research the of the publishers of OA journals and thereby increase (2) the of new OA journals, this foster competition publishers of OA journals for Yet this the that many years to a and to Until the new journal will have on the fees of the journals. (3) of academic libraries can constitute a to the journal publishers, potentially the of example is the in which so far two between a of most academic libraries in on the one and Wiley and Springer as publishers of scholarly journals in all disciplines on the other is a controversial discussion whether such impede competition on the journal market to the detriment of small publishers or indeed In any such to promote the of traditional CA journals OA OA publishing may several and the from "reader pays" to "author pays" can for researchers, for in developing countries. As we have 18% of OA journals APC for such Second, or to foster OA, such as the above, may to the of researchers who to the detriment of those who do not. 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This article investigates the discourses of academic legitimacy that surround the production, consumption, and accreditation of online scholarship. Using the web-based media and cultural studies journal (http://journal.media-culture.org.au) as a case study, it examines how online scholarly journals often position themselves as occupying a space between the academic and the popular and as having a functional advantage over print-based media in promoting a spirit of public intellectualism. The current research agenda of both government and academe prioritises academic research that is efficient, self-promoting, and relevant to the public. Yet, although the cost-effectiveness and public-intellectual focus of online scholarship speak to these research priorities, online journals such as M/C Journal have occupied, and continue to occupy, an unstable position in relation to the perceived academic legitimacy of their content. Although some online scholarly journals have achieved a limited form of recognition within a system of accreditation that still privileges print-based scholarship, I argue that this, nevertheless, points to the fact that traditional textual notions of legitimate academic work continue to pervade the research agenda of an academe that increasingly promotes flexible delivery of teaching and online research initiatives.