10.5281/zenodo.5793611
https://zenodo.org/records/5793611
oai:zenodo.org:5793611
Björn Brembs
Björn Brembs
0000-0001-7824-7650
Universität Regensburg, Germany
Philippe Huneman
Philippe Huneman
0000-0002-7789-6197
IHPST, CNRS, Paris, France
Felix Schönbrodt
Felix Schönbrodt
0000-0002-8282-3910
LMU Munich, Germany
Gustav Nilsonne
Gustav Nilsonne
0000-0001-5273-0150
Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Toma Susi
Toma Susi
0000-0003-2513-573X
University of Vienna, Austria
Renke Siems
Renke Siems
0000-0002-9824-5449
Reutlingen, Germany
Pandelis Perakakis
Pandelis Perakakis
0000-0002-9130-3247
Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Varvara Trachana
Varvara Trachana
University of Thessaly, Larisa, Greece
Lai Ma
Lai Ma
0000-0002-0997-3605
University College Dublin, Ireland
Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado
Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado
0000-0002-8226-6608
Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain
Replacing academic journals
Zenodo
2021
Plan I, infrastructure, journals, scholarship, literature, research data, source code, science
2021-12-20
eng
10.5281/zenodo.5526634
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
A major factor underlying several of scholarship's most pressing problems is its antiquated journal system with its trifecta of reproducibility, affordability and functionality crises. Any solution needs to not only solve the current problems but also be capable of preventing a takeover by corporations. Technically, there is broad agreement on the goal for a modern scholarly digital infrastructure: it needs to replace traditional journals with a decentralized, resilient, evolvable network that is interconnected by open standards under the governance of the scholarly community. It needs to replace the monopolies of current journals with a genuine, functioning and well-regulated market. In this new market, substitutable service providers compete and innovate according to the conditions of the scholarly community, avoiding further vendor lock-in. Redirection of funding from the legacy publishers to the new framework may be realized by a tried-and-tested incentive system: Funding agencies have ensured minimum standards at funded institutions by requiring specific infrastructures. These requirements, updated to include the new framework, provide exquisite incentives for institutions to redirect their infrastructure funds from antiquated journals to modern technology. At the same time and enabled by this plan, new, modern and adaptable reputation systems, long demanded by the scientific community, can finally be implemented.
Ownership involves socially recognized economic rights, first and foremost the exclusive control over that property, with the self-efficacy it affords. The inability to exert such control over crucial components of their scholarly infrastructure in the face of a generally recognized need for action for over three decades now, evinces the dramatic erosion of real ownership rights for the scholarly community over said infrastructure. Thus, this proposal is motivated not only by the now very urgent need to restore such ownership to the scholarly community, but also by the understanding that through their funding bodies, scholars may have an effective and proven avenue at their disposal to identify game-changing actions and to design a financial incentive structure for recipient institutions that can help realize the restoration of ownership, with the goal to implement open digital infrastructures that are as effective and as invisible as their non-digital counterparts.