Institution: Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia
QUT currently hosts five open access, international, peer-reviewed journals:
Since 2010, QUT Library has hosted online academic journals on Open Journal Systems (OJS), a journal management and publishing system developed by the Public Knowledge Project. OJS is open-source software installed and controlled locally, providing a management system where editors can manage their publishing requirements. Each journal has its own journal manager or managing editor.
Each journal has aspired to best practice in open access publishing, committing to:
As well as inclusion in prescribed international indexing services (including Scopus), all QUT journals are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). DOAJ indexes and provides access to over 18,400 peer-reviewed journals. Three of QUT’s five journals (International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy; Law, Technology and Humans, and Student Success) have the DOAJ Seal. The Seal is awarded to journals that achieve a high level of openness and adhere to best practice and high publishing standards. Only `0% of journals indexed by DOAJ have been awarded the Seal, and of these only nine are Australasian.
Software support is provided by QUT’s IT division, and a small number of staff are allocated to necessary support tasks, including problem solving and software updates. Institutional disruption (e.g., due to COVID-19 and/or internal restructures) has implications for this level of IT support. Publishing each journal also relies on the sustained efforts of editorial teams whose involvement in the journal/s may not be their main role but may form part of their academic or professional service. Additionally, there are considerations around succession planning if key staff leave the institution.
In 2013 the QUT Open Access Journals Community of Practice was formed to share practice, ideas and innovation around the use of OJS, and to communicate activities and experiences related to online publishing and the open access environment. Membership includes journal managers, editors, QUT Library staff involved in scholarly publishing and technical staff supporting the journal software. The community contributes via the sharing of resources, OJS information, good practice guidelines, news and information.
The support of the QUT Library, and specifically the Office for Scholarly Communication, has been crucial in ensuring alignment to good practice and viability in academic publishing.
In 2019, a journal management role in a faculty was repositioned centrally in the Office for Scholarly Communication, QUT Library. This repositioning demonstrates a commitment to publishing quality, peer-reviewed scholarly publications, and an acknowledgment of QUT’s maturation in the open access environment.
Alignment to open access practices in academic publishing has not been an arbitrary consideration. The benefits of open scholarship are clearly articulated by QUT (in policy and practice) and align to emerging global practices and trends in publishing. Linkages to international open access organisations and in-kind support via institutional membership to Open Access Australasia provides validity and purpose.
The long-term sustainability of open access journals depends on the willingness of institutions to recognise the value of increasing dissemination via platforms without paywalls; and to make scholarly research and investigation accessible and equitable for all.
Dr David Rodríguez Goyes is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo, Norway, and an associate professor at the Universidad Antonio Nariño, Colombia.
David published his first co-authored article in the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy (IJCJSD) in 2016. He has also been part of a guest editorial team for two special issues: Towards Global Green Criminological Dialogues: Voices from the Americas and Europe (2019) and Green Criminological Dialogues: Voices from Asia (2022)
David is now a member of the Journal’s International Editorial Board and in 2020 was appointed for a term as part of the Editorial Team.
'My research is oriented towards social change; I want to affect the way activists, lawmakers, policymakers, practitioners and even scholars see and behave in the world. Wide distribution of my writing is one of the most powerful tools I have as a scholar. Under that framework, I divide my experience as a publicly oriented academic writer into two depending on the country I inhabit. While working in Norway I can use the University’s abundant economic resources to boost my research in various ways: from getting research assistance, to acquiring more books, to paying for the open access fees in otherwise closed journals. Meanwhile, working in Colombia—an economically weak country—removes all those advantages. So, publishing in the open access International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy (IJCJSD) benefits my scholarship particularly when hired by a Latin American university because it enables me to widely (and legally) distribute my research outputs.
Since 2020 I have collaborated with Survival International, an international human rights organisation that campaigns for the rights of Indigenous peoples around the world. They use the insights of my research in their campaigns and disseminate my articles widely to substantiate their claims. Such collaboration is only possible when articles are open access: it began with the article Between ‘Conservation’ and ‘Development’. The construction of ‘protected nature’ and the environmental disenfranchisement of Indigenous communities (Goyes & South, 2019), which they have used to criticise the 30x30 Campaign for Nature. Together with Nigel South (Professor of Sociology, University of Essex) I wrote that article when working in Colombia, and its publication as open access allowed me to cooperate with Survival International, a human rights organisation that campaigns for the rights of indigenous and/or tribal peoples and uncontacted peoples. I have maintained the collaboration with the organisation even after moving to Norway; but here it is the university that pays the high fees to make my outputs openly distributable. '
Goyes, D. R., & South, N. (2019). Between 'conservation' and 'development'. The construction of 'protected nature' and the environmental disenfranchisement of indigenous communities. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 8(3), 89-104. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v8i3.1247
Tracy Creagh, Journal Manager, Academic Journals, Office for Scholarly Communication, QUT Library - t.creagh@qut.edu.au
Tracy Creagh - t.creagh@qut.edu.au
