The Role of Small/National Publishers/Journals

This panel focuses on the role of publishers/journals in the small scholarly communities, where most of the journals are subsidized by the government, published in a local language, with low visibility, readability and citeability, struggling to obtain higher level of editorial standards. In small communities, publishers and editors are facing numerous challenges, such as mainly volunteering staff, lack of technical support, lack of independent, unbiased reviewers (for non-English manuscripts), limited financial resources, and inability to make long-term plans and follow the recent changes in the scholarly publishing area. Changes in government policy often affect open access journals that do not charge authors/institutions for publishing papers (diamond journals), and while in some countries such journals are increasingly supported, in others already small subsidies are reduced.

We will discuss some of the main obstacles and propose possible solutions how to overcome them, reach higher editorial standards and attract high-quality submissions. The role of the scholarly journals at the national level will be explored, with a particular focus on the work with young scientists, educating them how to become better researchers, authors and reviewers, and include them also in the editorial work. The panellists will comment on Plan S requirements for the journals, with the special attention to the importance of making underlying data available, which would improve the peer review process, provide more reliable research results, improve visibility of the journal, and support Open Science.