Diamond Open Access and Open Infrastructures Have Shaped the Canadian Scholarly Journal Landscape Since the Start of the Digital Era

Abstract

Scholarly publishing involves multiple stakeholders having various types of interest. In Canada, the implication of universities, the presence of societies and the availability of governmental support for periodicals seem to have contributed to a rather diverse ecosystem of journals. This study presents in detail the current state of these journals, in addition to past trends and transformations during the 20th century and, in particular, the digital era. To this effect, we created a new dataset, including a total of 1256 journals, 944 of which appeared to be active today, specifically focusing on the supporting organizations behind the journals, the types of (open) access, disciplines, geographic origins, languages of publication and hosting platforms and tools. The main overarching traits across Canadian scholarly journals are an important presence of Diamond open access, which has been adopted by 62% of the journals, a predominance of the Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines and a scarce presence of the major commercial publishers. The digital era allowed for the development of open infrastructures, which contributed to the creation of a new generation of journals that massively adopted Diamond open access, often supported by university libraries. However, journal cessation also increased, especially among the recently founded journals. These results provide valuable insights for the design of tailored practices and policies that cater to the needs of different types of periodicals and that take into account the evolving practices across the Canadian scholarly journal landscape.

Simon van Bellen

Érudit

Simon van Bellen is senior research advisor at Érudit and member of the UNESCO Chair for Open Science at the School of Library and Information Sciences of the University of Montréal. He aims to explore various aspects of scholarly communication, especially patterns in the use of scholarly journals, the development of open access and the evaluation of impact of research and publication. He holds a PhD in Environmental science from Université du Québec à Montréal (2011).

Lucía Céspedes

Érudit

Lucía Céspedes is a research counselor at Érudit, a member of the UNESCO Chair for Open Science at the School of Library and Information Sciences of the University of Montréal, and a member of the Chaire de recherche du Québec sur la découvrabilité des contenus scientifiques en français. She holds a PhD in Latin American Social studies, with a focus on sociology, from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Her research brings together sociolinguistics, social studies of science and technology, open science and scholarly communication, in order to analyze conditions of production and circulation of scientific knowledge in centres and peripheries.