Author: Tony Roche, Emerald’s Chief Officer: Publishing & Strategic Relationships
All too often academic publishers are painted with the same brush, but there are numerous differences between organisations, not least when it comes to purpose and publishing practices.
Typically, two personas (‘commercial’ or ‘society/NFP’) are used by funders, policymakers, and some library communities. However, as a mid-sized, commercial publisher of applied, social sciences research, Emerald’s purpose embodies what we stand for, and maps right through our objectives:
To publish research that has real-world impact by creating an equitable research and publishing environment where all voices are represented and heard.
As long-standing signatories to the SDG Publisher Compact, DORA and OASPA member, we fundamentally believe that diversity drives better outcomes for society, and that this should include a diversity of publishing models and publishers within the ecosystem, whether commercial or not-for-profit.
Embodied by the phrase ‘Open to All’, we’re committed to listening to what the research community needs and wants, we’re open to experimenting and we remain open-minded about the future open access (OA) landscape.
Tony Roche, Emerald’s Chief Officer: Publishing & Strategic Relationships explains the journey we’ve been on so far to ensure we continue to be ‘open to all’…
There have been many conversations recently on whether the diamond or platinum open access model should be explored further as a way to diversify the publishing landscape and options to authors around OA publishing, without payment of an article processing charge (APC).
We first introduced the platinum open access model in 2014 and in the subsequent 10 years we have demonstrated that the model can be financially stable for our customer associations and institutions. The Emerald Publishing Services portfolio now includes over 70 sponsored diamond open access journals, published in partnership with organizations such as universities and associations. One benefit of the model to authors is that there are no charges for the author to publish OA in these sponsored publications, with articles published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The programme aligns with current cOAlition S and Plan S requirements and continues to be an important option within Emerald’s OA offering.
Since 2014, we’ve offered a green open access route on all Emerald journal or book chapters. This means authors have the option to make their accepted research immediately and openly available upon publication under a Creative Commons CC BY NC license, free from payment.
We remain one of only a handful of publishers that does not impose an embargo period, and whilst the CC BY NC license does not meet cOAlition S/Plan S licensing requirements, it remains highly valued by our author communities and appreciated by many libraries and consortia.
Authors publishing may deposit their author accepted manuscript (AAM) at any point, before being made publicly accessible following official publication (i.e. as soon as the typeset version of record is published).
Whilst we have also offered the gold open access model for a number of years in our hybrid journals and books, we also offer a growing programme of solely gold open access journals. The collection currently comprises 11 journals, each focused on applied and interdisciplinary research aligned to global societal challenges. This programme will continue to grow in the coming years.
With each of our fully open journals aligned to one of more United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), authors are invited to join part of a community aiming to accelerate mitigation of challenges including global equity, climate and environmental issues.
In relation to equity across the publishing process itself, we’ve implemented the following:
- Each new journal’s article processing charges (APCs) have been waived for the first year of publication
- Waivers and discounts are available to authors from low/low-middle income countries
- We’re committed to equal representation across all the newly established editorial boards
- All articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) *.
The gold OA route complies with mandates from funding body programmes around the world, including for example Plan S, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
And lastly, I wanted to mention our learnings from Emerald Open Research. Over the period 2019 to 2023 Emerald launched an Open Research offer on the F1000 platform, for interdisciplinary research aligned to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. This put into action our commitment not just to Open Access but Open Research/Open Science more broadly. What we learned from this experience was that:
- Social sciences communities continue to struggle for funding to pay the APCs
- Authors still require bibliometric indicators such as Impact Factors which the Open Research Platforms do not offer
- Authors struggle to comply even with light-touch Open Data requirements
- There was no uptake from customers for Emerald Open Research even where we offered the publication route as part of Read & Publish agreements.
Despite the model ultimately not proving viable, we are pleased to have made the investment in the initiative, whose objectives for a wider open research workflow went beyond the gold OA output objective of Plan S.
Going forward we’ve established a team focussed on OA, who will investigate, evaluate and recommend what the future of OA and models will look like at Emerald, co-creating this with our trusted customer community. It’s something we’re fully invested in and committed to providing sustainable open access that works for all.
*Permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction of the content in any medium, providing that the original author and source are credited.
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