The vital importance of being open: reflections on peer reviewing in scholarly publishing

ABSTRACT

This position paper reflects upon the publication policies and practices of the Scottish Geographical Journal (SGJ), as presented by the new editorial team in their introductory editorial ‘‘In the critical department’: refreshing the Scottish Geographical Journal’ (Philo, C., Hurst, M., Laurie, E., & Thomas, R. (2022). ‘In the Critical Department’: Refreshing the Scottish Geographical Journal. Scottish Geographical Journal, 138(1-2), 1–15). Specifically, the focus is on alternative, open peer review practices that the journal has considered as one opportunity to emphasise mutual respect between scholars and substantial research quality, vis-à-vis aggression and Journal Impact Factors. The paper draws from the author’s own experiences as science editor, from her activities in science policy, and from networks in non-commercial open access publishing often referred to as diamond or platinum OA.

KEYWORDS:

• Open peer review
• alternative scholarly publishing
• diamond open access
• platinum open access

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Chris Philo for inviting me to write this commentary and the anonymous referee whose constructive comments helped me to improve the text. I am also grateful to the Geographical Society of Finland for their full support of Fennia’s ‘open agenda’ that I have been able to develop as the Editor-in-Chief, as well as to the Federation of Learned Societies that has supported this development as part of non-commercial open publishing in Finland. The paper was written as part of two research projects funded by the Academy of Finland (SA339833, SA347374).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For further information about the initiatives mentioned here, see: http://freejournals.org/; https://libraria.cc/about/; and https://www.operas-eu.org/.

2 The full text of this play can be found online in various places: eg. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/earnest/full-text/.

3 See https://www.tsv.fi?en/services/label-for-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications.

4 Comments published by the permission of the peer reviewers.

5 See https://fennia.journal.fi/issue/view/7317.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland [grant numbers SA339833, SA347374].