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Open Access and Equity, Justice, and Diversity
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Open Access and Equity, Justice, and Diversity

A special issue of Publications (ISSN 2304-6775).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2023) | Viewed by 25270

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Katie Wilson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Education, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Interests: open access; open knowledge; diversity; equity; indigenous education
Prof. Dr. Lucy Montgomery

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia
Interests: open access; open knowledge; open books
Dr. Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia
Interests: open access; open knowledge; bibliometrics; statistics; data science

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Open Access movement promotes the open sharing and accessibility of knowledge created by members of the academic and research community with stakeholders including businesses, politicians, community groups, and leaders and citizens across the world. It challenges established publishing and promotion practices within the academic and research scholarly environment that endorse and encourage the publication of research in commercial, subscription-based paywalled journals and books. This raises issues of equity, as the availability of such outputs is restricted to those with institutional access, individual subscriptions, technology, and the resources to pay to read or download. This excludes individuals outside the scholarly community and academics and researchers for whom journal subscription and book costs are prohibitive. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of immediate and free Open Access to research and knowledge to all.

From a critical perspective, the Open Access movement promotes diversity in knowledge creation. This encourages the representation of diverse dimensions of gender, ethnicity, race, indigeneity, disability, age, content, and geography in research workforces and the production of research.

The notion of justice in Open Access includes epistemological knowledge, languages, and infrastructures within scholarly publishing; and acknowledging and preventing ongoing colonisation and the knowledge hegemony of the west or global north. This means enabling the creation, publication, and dissemination of locally-based multilingual and non-Latin/non-Roman scripts in national and international research sources; in other words, epistemic and cognitive justice.

We seek submissions that may relate to the following topics (but may include more):

  • the impact of commercial publishing Open Access models and transformative/read and publish agreements
  • the effects of regional and national developments such as Europe’s Plan S and the US Office of Science and Technology Public Access Memo
  • global vs. regional Open Access publishing models
  • the role of data and analysis in understanding diversity, equity, and justice
  • open access facilitating inclusive practices and knowledge sharing
  • the role of metadata in supporting and enabling diversity, equity, and justice in open access
  • opportunities and challenges associated with identifying Open Access publications using non-Latin scripts
  • protecting rights and knowledges, practicing fairness with Open Access
  • the role of technology in achieving diversity, equity, and justice in Open Access

All published manuscripts will be Open Access with no fees charged.

Dr. Katie Wilson
Prof. Dr. Lucy Montgomery
Dr. Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Publications is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this Special Issue is 0 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • open access/open science
  • open scholarship
  • diversity
  • gender
  • race/ethnicity
  • dis/ability
  • equity
  • language
  • justice

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 307 KiB  
Article
Making Open Scholarship More Equitable and Inclusive
by Paul Longley Arthur, Lydia Hearn, John C. Ryan, Nirmala Menon and Langa Khumalo
Publications 2023, 11(3), 41; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11030041 - 07 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2154
Abstract
Democratizing access to information is an enabler for our digital future. It can transform how knowledge is created, preserved, and shared, and strengthen the connection between academics and the communities they serve. Yet, open scholarship is influenced by history and politics. This article [...] Read more.
Democratizing access to information is an enabler for our digital future. It can transform how knowledge is created, preserved, and shared, and strengthen the connection between academics and the communities they serve. Yet, open scholarship is influenced by history and politics. This article explores the foundations underlying open scholarship as a quest for more just, equitable, and inclusive societies. It analyzes the origins of the open scholarship movement and explores how systemic factors have impacted equality and equity of knowledge access and production according to location, nationality, race, age, gender, and socio-economic circumstances. It highlights how the privileges of the global North permeate academic and technical standards, norms, and infrastructures. It also reviews how the collective design of more open and collaborative networks can engage a richer diversity of communities, enabling greater social inclusion, and presents key examples. By fostering dialogue with multiple stakeholders, more effective avenues for knowledge production and representation can be built based on approaches that are accessible, participatory, interactive, ethical, and transparent, and that reach a far broader public. This expansive vision of open science will lead to a more unified knowledge economy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Open Access and Equity, Justice, and Diversity)
17 pages, 3455 KiB  
Article
Social Justice: The Golden Thread in the Openness Movement
by Reggie Raju, Jill Claassen and Kaela De Lillie
Publications 2023, 11(3), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11030036 - 06 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1365
Abstract
The current publishing landscape perpetuates biases that continue to exclude those who have been previously marginalized, specifically from the Global South including Africa. Incorporating philanthropy as the only driving principle to openly share knowledge is insufficient to truly empower and be inclusive to [...] Read more.
The current publishing landscape perpetuates biases that continue to exclude those who have been previously marginalized, specifically from the Global South including Africa. Incorporating philanthropy as the only driving principle to openly share knowledge is insufficient to truly empower and be inclusive to those who have been relegated to the periphery of the scholarly communication ecosystem. Social justice principles have to underpin the foundation of this ecosystem, in tandem with philanthropy, to shed light on these exclusionary, systemic publishing practices and processes. This will entail first breaking down these unfair practices and then rebuilding the ecosystem by advancing equity, diversity and inclusion. This paper highlights the current gaps in the openness movement and demonstrates, through an exemplar of a publishing platform, how the publishing landscape can be transformed. The publishing platform employs a multi-tenant model that enables multiple institutions to publish and disseminate knowledge on one shared instance of the software. The continental platform and the tenant model that it utilizes address the technological and infrastructural barriers often experienced in the Global South and Africa, while simultaneously serving as a collective hub for hosting African scholarship. This case study methodology is used to investigate how the alternate publishing route recaptures the philanthropic pillars of the openness movement. The findings provide evidence for a return to the founding principles of the openness movement and, as importantly, demonstrates the impact of open access on student success. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Open Access and Equity, Justice, and Diversity)
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9 pages, 484 KiB  
Article
The Politics of Rights Retention
by Samuel A. Moore
Publications 2023, 11(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11020028 - 12 May 2023
Viewed by 17786
Abstract
This article presents a commentary on the recent resurgence of interest in the practice of rights retention in scholarly publishing. Led in part by the evolving European policy landscape, rights retention seeks to ensure immediate access to accepted manuscripts uploaded to repositories. The [...] Read more.
This article presents a commentary on the recent resurgence of interest in the practice of rights retention in scholarly publishing. Led in part by the evolving European policy landscape, rights retention seeks to ensure immediate access to accepted manuscripts uploaded to repositories. The article identifies a trajectory in the development of rights retention from something that publishers could previously ignore to a practice they are now forced to confront. Despite being couched in the neoliberal logic of market-centric policymaking, I argue that rights retention represents a more combative approach to publisher power by institutions and funders that could yield significant benefits for a more equitable system of open access publishing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Open Access and Equity, Justice, and Diversity)
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17 pages, 3183 KiB  
Article
Emerging Scholars in Academia: An Analysis of the Impact of IAPSS Politikon in the Academic Careers of Its Authors
by Ana Magdalena Figueroa, Nzube Chukwuma and Lumanyano Ngcayisa
Publications 2023, 11(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11010012 - 28 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1442
Abstract
This paper analyzes students, recent graduates, and emerging scholars’ involvement in academic publishing, specifically by studying the impact of their publications in Politikon, the International Association for Political Science Students’ Journal, and their academic careers. The results of a standardized self-administered survey [...] Read more.
This paper analyzes students, recent graduates, and emerging scholars’ involvement in academic publishing, specifically by studying the impact of their publications in Politikon, the International Association for Political Science Students’ Journal, and their academic careers. The results of a standardized self-administered survey serve to assess authors’ motivations and impact of publish ing with IAPSS Politikon. The data show that publishing with Politikon has helped emerging researchers get more experience concerning the publication process and has improved their research, writing, and analyzing skills. Additionally, an essential part of them said they increased their educational background or obtained a new higher position after publishing with Politikon. In fact, 50 per cent of these scholars said they were promoted after publishing with the journal. Furthermore, Politikon, establishes a platform for Global South scholarship to be at the forefront of Political Science/International Relations debates and knowledge production. This implies the importance of Politikon in the early career of scholars by giving them the right tools to develop professionally and by reaching scholars from all around the world, especially from the Global South in an effort to contribute to global international relations and global governance reform. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Open Access and Equity, Justice, and Diversity)
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