What Are the Characteristics of Canadian Independent, Scholarly Journals? Results from a Website Analysis

Abstract

The dominance of commercial publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon 2015) has led to a discussion in Canada focusing on alternative models for supporting independent, non-commercial, scholarly journals. Although small in number, these journals represent an important contribution to Canadian and global scholarship. They also act as a counterbalance to the increasingly for-profit nature of scholarly publishing. Despite their importance, there exists no definitive list of journals of this nature in Canada, making analysis and understanding of their characteristics difficult.In order to address this gap, the researchers undertook an analysis of the websites of 485 Canadian, independent, scholarly journals. Independent was defined as journals which are not affiliated with a commercial publisher. The researchers gathered data for each journal on their access type (e.g., closed, open access), subject area, size and composition of the editorial team, and any affiliation(s). This data was then analyzed to create a portrait of these journals with these themes. The researchers found that most of these journals were affiliated with at least one organization, with over half being associated with two or more. They also discovered that affiliations varied depending on the discipline and that the size of the editorial team was correlated to the access type. Journals were predominantly in the humanities and social sciences, and the majority were open access (OA) without article processing charges (APCs).While the focus of this study is on Canadian journals, this article provides a framework for other researchers to examine non-commercial, independent publishing in their own countries. Its results also provide preliminary data which may inspire future avenues of research, particularly into models for non-APC, open access journals as well as the editorial board structure and size for independent journals.

Organizational Structures and Relationships in Canadian, Noncommercial Journals: Supporting Scholar- Led Publishing

“…), while more than half had at least two affiliations. 21 Research into international journals hosted on OJS suggests a similar pattern. 22 Neither of these articles however, provides exact details on the nature and extent of these relationships.…”

“…Under a previous research project investigating labor and compensation for editorial board members in noncommercial, Canadian scholarly journals, the authors assembled a list of 485 journals and conducted a survey in the fall of 2020. 27 Survey participants had an opportunity at the end of the questionnaire to indicate interest in a follow-up thirty to forty-five minute interview.…”

Work It

“…• Student journals • Archived journals (e.g., they had published in the last three years but noted they had ceased operations) • Conference proceedings • Professional or trade publications After reviewing the journal websites to verify that the journals met the inclusion criteria, the authors arrived at a list of 484 journals. Out of this list, 60 percent of the journals were fully open access (n = 292) and 76 percent were in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) fields (n = 367) (Lange and Severson 2021). The average size of editorial teams was twenty people.…”

“…The average size of editorial teams was twenty people. Given the dominance of HSS journals in this list, 4 it is not surprising that 22 percent of all journals in the dataset also currently receive funding from SSHRC's ASJ program (2018) (n = 108) (Lange and Severson 2021).…”

“…He writes that journals which are "based on voluntary work in the spirit of Open Source projects" could not scale beyond small journals handling a "limited number of manuscripts" (Björk 2013, 9). Although the journals in this study were not exclusively open access, the sample they were pulled from included a majority of journals with no-fee open access as their business model (Lange and Severson 2021).…”