A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Wrzesinski, Marcel; Riechert, Patrick Urs; Dubois, Frédéric; Katzenbach, Christian Working Paper Working with publication technology to make open access journals sustainable HIIG Discussion Paper Series, No. 2021-2 Suggested Citation: Wrzesinski, Marcel; Riechert, Patrick Urs; Dubois, Frédéric; Katzenbach, Christian (2021) : Working with publication technology to make open access journals sustainable, HIIG Discussion Paper Series, No. 2021-2, Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft (HIIG), Berlin, http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558781 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/231355 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.econstor.eu MARCEL WRZESINSKI, PATRICK URS RIECHERT, FRÉDÉRIC DUBOIS, CHRISTIAN KATZENBACH Working with publication technology to make open access journals sustainable HIIG DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES 2021-02 WORKING WITH PUBLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS SUSTAINABLE ABSTRACT Over the last 25 years, scholars around the world have used electronic publishing to open up their work, share it with interested publics instantly or even become publishers themselves. This white paper explores in what ways advances in publication technology in the journal sector (e.g. the widespread use of content management and editorial systems) contributes to a more inclusive and sustainable open access ecosystem. Drawing on a study we did in Germany in 2019-2021, and for which we tested technical solutions together with the international, peer-reviewed diamond open access journal Internet Policy Review, we present and discuss publishing solutions based on software, workflows, and collaborations with regard to their practicability and scalability. The paper finds that scholar-led publishing is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to technical solutions tending towards increased bibliodiversity (i.e., variety of content, publication formats and publishing institutions). KEYWORDS Open access, Scholar-led, Publication technology, Sustainability, Small sciences CITATION Wrzesinski, M., Riechert, P. U., Dubois, F., & Katzenbach, C. (2021). Working with publication technology to make open access journals sustainable. HIIG Discussion Paper Series 2021-2. 27 pages. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558781 LICENCE This work is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (International) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Copyright remains with the authors. AUTHOR INFO / FUNDING Marcel Wrzesinski is Open Access Officer at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society and a researcher in the project “Innovative Open Access in the Small Sciences”. He worked with several Open Access Gold journals in order to create and sustain structures of scholar-led publishing. Patrick Urs Riechert is Student Assistant at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society where he works as editorial assistant for e-journal Internet Policy Review. He is an MA student in Political science at Freie Universität Berlin. HIIG DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES · 2021-02 1 WORKING WITH PUBLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS SUSTAINABLE Frédéric Dubois is Managing Editor of Internet Policy Review, an open access journal on internet regulation published by the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Dr Christian Katzenbach is Senior Researcher and Research Group Leader at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. He co-directs the interdisciplinary research program “Digital Society“ and leads multiple international projects on platform governance, controversies around artificial intelligence, and open access. The project “Innovative Open Access in the Small Sciences” is a cooperation between the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society and the ZBW—Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) between June 2019 and February 2021. HIIG DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES · 2021-02 2 WORKING WITH PUBLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS SUSTAINABLE CONTENT 1 Introduction 5 2 Technical innovations fostering sustainability 6 3 Open access and web accessibility 7 3.1 Web accessibility and accessibility evaluation 7 3.2 Accessible output formats 8 3.3 Key steps 9 3.4 Use case Internet Policy Review 9 4 Archiving, identification, and indexing: Making research available, discoverable, and impactful 11 4.1 Availability through long-term preservation 11 4.2 Identification services for electronic publishing 12 4.3 Indices and metrics for research dissemination 14 4.4 Key steps 17 4.5 Use case Internet Policy Review 17 5 Managing and documenting workflows: Open source (journal) systems 20 5.1 Editorial management systems as tools of sustainability 20 5.2 Key steps 21 5.3 Use case Internet Policy Review 21 6 Recommendations for sustainable open access publishing 24 6.1 Streamlining workflows with professional publication software 24 6.2 Displaying and contextualising altmetrics to showcase bibliometric diversity 24 6.3 Increasing impact through repository-based archiving and indexing 25 6.4 Providing accessible, single-source output formats 25 HIIG DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES · 2021-02 3 WORKING WITH PUBLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS SUSTAINABLE 6.5 Identifying authors and institutions via open databases and standards 25 7 Conclusion 25 8 References 26 HIIG DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES · 2021-02 4 WORKING WITH PUBLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS SUSTAINABLE 1 Introduction The publishing industry transformed more in the last 25 years than it has in the previous three hundred, largely due to the digital revolution: new business models arose (Björk and Korkeamäki, 2020) and an innovative culture of writing and reading emerged. Suddenly, electronic publishing enabled researchers around the world to open up their work, share it with an interested public instantly, or become publishers themselves (e.g., by running open access journals, university presses, or other publishing initiatives). This coincided with the formation of the open access movement, which questioned the toll access model and 1 fostered an equitable, open system of science. And besides the many good political reasons for publishing 2 research open access, there are also pragmatic and infrastructural advantages of electronic publishing and the technological revolution behind it: knowledge is more powerful if created together, it can be 3 disseminated widely and more quickly, and its scientometric impact can be measured more efficiently. Against this backdrop, this white paper explores in what ways advances in publication technology and electronic publishing in the journal sector (e.g., the widespread use of content management systems and the rise of editorial management systems like OJS) can contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable open access ecosystem, therefore increasing independence, productivity, and quality. As such and acknowledging the diversity of stakeholders within that ecosystem, this paper addresses not only those actively involved in publishing academic content but also funders and readers. This wide audience—including libraries, journals, digital data infrastructures, and funding organisations—means this paper is broad in scope and adopts a somewhat more generic approach. This paper is situated in the wider context of the quest for sustainable scholar-led publishing and 4 bibliodiversity, wherein we understand ‘scholar-led’ as having scholars actively leading publishing projects independently of large and commercial publishing houses. In this understanding, ‘scholar-led’ includes the important work of small and non-profit publishing houses, which are indicative of the diversity especially of small and interdisciplinary fields of research. Within the DFG funded project ‘Innovative Open Access in Small Sciences’ (June 2019 to February 2021), we addressed questions of sustainable publishing with regard to both business models and technical solutions—building on previous efforts to contribute to innovations within open access publishing. The project tested these solutions together with the international, peer- reviewed diamond open access5 journal Internet Policy Review (cooperatively published