Scholar-Led and Community-Driven Publishing

The challenges of scholarly publishing are diverse. There are various formats and access possibilities, complex quality assurance processes, and several administration and governance models. The monopoly over the distribution of knowledge enjoyed by large commercial publishers is being increasingly confronted by researchers who are successfully mastering these challenges and publishing and distributing their research results themselves. The idea of quality-assured publishing by scientists themselves is actually not new. Rather, it goes back to professional associations and scholarly societies, which have always promoted and guided scholarly publishing.

In the current open access ecosystem, two alternatives to the commercial publisher model can be distinguished: community-driven and scholar-led publishing. This distinction is purely descriptive and does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the quality or relevance of publishing projects. The two models are simply subject to different circumstances and dynamics and, thus, possibly to a different action and values system (see Steiner, 2022). In addition, the dividing lines between the two models vary depending on the context (see Steiner, 2023, on the divergent use of the terms in different publication cultures). At the same time, both models have great science policy relevance and contribute to important bibliodiversity in the scholarly publishing system.

• German Science and Humanities Council paper entitled "Recommendations on the Transformation of Academic Publishing: Towards Open Access" (January 2022).
• EUA Open Science Agenda 2025 (February 2022).
• The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI): 20th Anniversary Recommendations (February 2022).
• Action Plan for Diamond Open Access (March 2022).
• Thesen zur Zukunft des wissenschaftsgeleiteten Open-Access-Publizierens [Theses on the Future of Scholar-Led Open Access Publishing] (September 2023).

Scholar-led or community-driven journals are subject only to a limited extent to the constraints that apply to journals in the hands of commercial publishers. As they do not have to make a profit, they can be flexible and unconventional, for example when it comes to trying out new ways of publishing and disseminating scholarly content. In addition, thanks to their own form of governance, they can question certain basic assumptions of scholarly publishing. In what follows, we have compiled some suggestions and tips for publishers and editors of scholar-led and community-driven journals.

There are various areas in which scholar-led and community-driven journals try out new models. For example, they look for new publication formats that can be used instead of or in addition to the classical research article to disseminate scientific results. This includes, for example, the publication of preprints, research materials (e.g., field journals, notes, sketches) or other supplements. With these more experimental formats, greater transparency can be created for the actual research, reproducibility can be made easier, and the participation of third parties can be guided, and thus scientific discourse as a whole can be promoted.

Other scholar-led and community-driven journals are trying out new and inclusive processes of quality assurance. Under the headings "open review" and "collaborative review", they are trying to open up the traditional anonymous peer-review system both in terms of naming and recruiting. Would it be possible to try out such a process of quality assurance for your journal? If so, your journal would contribute to transforming the review culture into one that puts collegial exchange and productive criticism centre stage.

The diversity of formats and quality-assurance processes is reflected also in editorial workflows. Do you see possibilities for adapting your workflows to a diverse editorial team at various locations? This is becoming increasingly possible through the deployment of digital tools that are already widely used by scholar-led and community-led journals. They include editorial management systems (e.g., Open Journal Systems), collaborative writing and editing tools (e.g., CryptPad, Etherpad), and cloud services (e.g., mostly local, institutional solutions).

Last but not least, many scholarly publishing projects are actively involved in promoting digital sovereignty – that is, self-determination and autonomy over own data (see Pohle & Thiel, 2020). Within your journal, you can support and promote this desire for independence, for example by giving preference to open source services and tools that enable control over the (meta)data of persons and publications. In addition, you can critically question the widely used systems for measuring and evaluating relevance (e.g., the Impact Factor), use alternative models (e.g., altmetrics), or participate in new forms of measurement. The greatest possible openness and transparency of reuse also contributes to this. Are the contents of your journal licensed as freely as possible (e.g., under a "free licence", or a "licence approved for free cultural work", which makes sense for scholarly literature)? Are the possibilities for reuse clearly communicated (e.g., easily findable on your website)?

Scholarly journals need a robust concept of organising and assuming responsibility. In the case of purely scholar-led or community-driven journals, these principles are based more on the scientific ethos of cooperation and collaboration than, for example, on competition for authors, citation frequencies, or consistent growth. These forms of publishing are also guided more strongly by values such as reliability and the common good. This identification of common ground or a common goal makes it easier in practice to involve your scientific community (see Moore & Adema, 2020). For example, you could consider whether your journal could become (more) actively involved in journal networks. The scholar-led.network in Germany or the international Free Journal Network offer their members a space for exchange and networking. In addition, alliances with other stakeholder groups in the wider environment of your journal may be useful. Do you have links to your scholarly society? To regional and supraregional scholarly libraries? To foundations that are sympathetic to your journalistic values and goals?

And finally, various scholar-led and community driven journals are already showing how good and sustainable financial management is currently possible. You could examine in your respective context whether different sources of funding can make your journal more independent (see Waidlein et al., 2021). Can you integrate consortial models (see KOALA), micro-funding (see Quartz OA; SciPost), association structures, or publishing partnerships into your business model? This succeeds all the better if synergies can be created and used through collaborative work, for example by building joint research infrastructures (see Bosman et al., 2021a). In Germany, efforts are being made to build up and strengthen publishing infrastructures (see CRAFT-OA).