academic publishing

The unsustainability of the “pay-as-you-go” publishing model

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By Abel Polese

This blog was originally published at The Research Whisperer on the 7th of March, 2023.

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Recently, Zhejiang Gonggong University announced that articles published with MDPI, Frontiers Media & Hindawi, the three largest open access publishers, would not be included in research performance statistics.

Universities have discouraged or banned staff from publishing in individual journals in the past, but this is the first report of whole publisher catalogues being excluded. I’ve seen discussions about whether these journals are worth publishing or whether they should be considered predatory. I’m concerned that the boundary between a predatory approach and the approach of pay-as-you-go journals is blurring.

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The devil’s in the framing: language and bias

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By Ella Whiteley

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

How we say things can be as important as what we say. In this post, Ella Whiteley explores the “framing effect”, its implications for education and research communication and in particular, its salience to discussions of sex and gender. 

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Less ‘prestigious’ journals can contain more diverse research, by citing them we can shape a more just politics of citation.

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Image Credit: Omar Flores on Unsplash

Drawing on their recent analysis of journals in the field of Higher Education Studies, which shows that journals with lower impact rankings are more likely to feature research from diverse geographic and linguistic contexts, Shannon Mason and Margaret K. Merga argue that researchers should adopt more careful citation practices, as a means to broaden and contextualise what counts as ‘prestigious’ research and create a more equitable publishing environment for research outside of core anglophone countries.

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