No Diamonds for DevBio

The recent publication of an editorial on the damages of gatekeeping in developmental biology (DevBio) journals, itself ironically locked behind a paywall and sold at short of 25$/reader, here acts as a starting point to discuss the unfortunate unpreparedness of many DevBio figures to lead productive conversation on the publishing models chosen by the journals in the field, and by the very journals they are at the helm of. From this, a call to the ever stronger need to redirect or reinvent the publication process in DevBio towards ways that reject the commercialisation of knowledge access and dissemination. A call to genuinely engage with ongoing collective movements that are not focused on reproducing capital but instead in establishing new community publishing relationships, and through avenues that are not only community-owned, but that also are genuinely community-oriented and community-benefitting.

The theme of this year‘s International Open Access Week is “community over commercialisation”, a theme chosen to encourage discussion about “which approaches to open scholarship prioritise the best interests of the public and the academic community”¹. The 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science² keeps stressing the need to support “non-commercial publishing models and collaborative publishing models with no article processing charges.”³, and already at the time made very clear the case of the need to prevent “inequitable extraction of profit from publicly funded scientific activities”³. Recommendations echoed again at the European level by the 2023 “Council conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable open access”, recommending support for “publishing models that do not charge fees to authors or readers and where authors can publish their work without funding/institutional eligibility criteria”⁴. Pressing conversations and recommendations that, unfortunately, only reach the field of DevBio as muffled sounds through a thick glass pane. A field whose own (public) conversations and reflections around publishing appear to constantly lag behind both international recommendations and ongoing broader movements of knowledge equity⁵, and in fact often are either manifestly oblivious- or deliberately uncaring of them. Not unrelatedly, DevBio indeed remains today a field whose publishing landscape manages to still be dominated by society- and community-journals all obsessively attached to a distorted revenue-centred implementation of open access (i.e. APC-based, gold open access or equivalent) that makes of those very article processing charges, and/or of that very commercialisation of knowledge condemned internationally, their foundation. And seem unable to talk about it.

This dissonant, almost stubbornly anachronistic character of the DevBio journal publishing discourse, almost existing as if in its own separate bubble, unable or unwilling to fully engage with conversations, movements, directives, and recommendations happening all around it, is all the more evident when contextualised against the parallel responses of scientists in other disciplines to those very conversations. Accordingly, while entire editorial boards of journals in ecology and evolution were already in 2019 resigning from for-profit journals in protest of APCs^{6 7}, and against the backdrop of international recommendations urging to support non-APC-based publishing models, DevBio scientists were celebrating new (though more diverse) appointments at the helm of their own APC-charging, Elsevier-published journals⁸ and seeing in these appointments genuine paths to ”improving […] equity in the scientific publishing field” as if these paths did not require an anti-capitalist praxis to go along with it. While scientists and investigators in Earth Sciences were rallying together to establish diamond open access journals (i.e. journals which are free to read and free to publish in) in refusal to continue to maintain publishing models that commercialise knowledge^{9 10}, DevBio community publishers clawed even tighter to the idea that their own financial stability should instead indeed derive from this very commercialisation, and that such an economic model is in fact in the best interests of the community¹¹. And as entire editorial boards, now in Neurobiology and now in Public Health, are again resigning from Elsevier journals^{12 13}, DevBio leaders are seen penning editorials arguing that an easier and increased submission of articles to their own Elsevier journal holds the key to the long-term sustainability of the field (see below).

The fact that leading DevBio conversation-outlets (and conversing DevBio leaders) managed to live through all of these events, surrounded by examples of discipline after discipline, collective after collective, denouncing, rejecting and moving away from the very publication models that make up instead the very status quo of DevBio publishing, without ever feeling the need to address the damning reflection these shine on the field, is a major failure of these outlets and of these leaders. A failure clearly in the not acting, but also even just in not bringing these conversations (especially because happening elsewhere) to general attention within. In fact, the building of publication consciousness among early career researchers (ECRs), and the bringing about of a full awareness of important contemporary knowledge-equity revendications, is likely the key to empowering the emergence of movements towards true community-serving publication models (e.g. diamond open access journals, or journal-independent publication) and should be - if anything - a priority of our field’s societies. And it would be of course such a priority if the sustained existence of these very societies - given their business choices - did not depend fully or in part on revenue generation through publication gatekeeping. It then has to become one of our own priorities as individual scientists.

It is in this very context that is ever the more frustrating to see the continued failure of established members of Global North DevBio to address or engage with these points in any meaningful way even when they decide to write about gatekeeping and needed publishing reform for the benefit of the field. Latest of such examples, a recent editorial¹⁴ by the editor in chief and board members of the official journal of the (USA) Society of Developmental Biology, all “deeply invested in the long-term sustainability of academic research”, and denouncing the negative effects of editorial gatekeeping on the health of the field. The main plea: that of a more considerate and less gatekeeping peer-review process to allow smoother and more streamlined publication. But when the answers to most of the pleas outlined by the article are already being actively explored (if not already fully available)¹⁵ through contemporary movements of journal-independent publication, preprints, and system of post-publication peer-review, and none of these are mentioned even just in passing, it is clear that the goal of the editorial is not really that of a more streamlined publication process, but that of a more streamlined journal publication process. And given the absence of DevBio diamond open access journals, it is - at the moment - that of a more streamlined publication process to APC- charging journals (in this specific case, to a journal that expects 3690$ to not paywall the research of its own scientists). So what is it exactly that the community is being called to build for new ECRs and “future generations”? A smoother, less bumpy, kinder sailing through less-closed gates that lead to… the toll booth? Are we supposed to celebrate an easier access to the till? Because creating easier, more inviting passages through gates after which are the exaction and extraction of capital is called luring in, not progress. It’s the toll agent realising that the closed gate to their premises is reducing customer flow. The fact that community-oriented conversations about gatekeeping could even be imagined to be written and then paywalled themselves and priced at 25$, in an Elsevier journal of all places^{16 17}, and one charging 3690$ an article excluding taxes¹⁸, is grotesque if one could still manage to laugh about, but otherwise just frustrating in its continued missing the mark¹⁹. And while yes, a lot of the money extracted by DevBio publishing model is “reinvested” into prizes, conferences, merchandising and opportunities (as if it had to be extracted in the first place, and extracted from the process of science publication), that is a model of “community through commercialisation” after “commercialisation of community”. Critically, not of community over commercialisation.

“We cannot continue to write, read and engage with critical scholarly works that excite us, that inspire our thinking and our desire for social change without also facing the uncomfortable fact that oftentimes, what we write and what we read are the very fuel of an academic publishing system which limits access to knowledge”, writes Beatriz P. Lorente in “Academic knowledge production and prefigurative politics”²⁰, and it could not be more evident in DevBio. We can also not continue to write about changes in our community’s publication practices without contextualising them with what is being asked to happen globally and with what is already happening in other disciplines, I would add. “The history of struggles that have helped to shape the present moment and are erased in the pages of APC-based community journal editorials”, to take inspiration from a conversation of the Hawthorn Archive²¹. And indeed, situated in the context of the actual modern ongoing open access struggles and revendications on the “long-term sustainability of academic research”, the countless denounces of APCs, national and international directives, some of which cited above, but also of the contemporary progressive discussion in scholarly communication, and the extremely active and rich exploration of what “modern redefinition of papers” do/can actually look like (often, and not by chance, driven by ECRs and making use of preprints), the level of discourse made available to DevBio researchers top-down is borderline ridiculous if not offensive. Especially if these come from editors of society journals and scientists embedded within the publishing process and which would be expected to have broader awareness of the current status of publishing revendications. Yet it is a level of discourse that DevBio ECRs have now have had to take as expected.

As writes Avery Gordon, “the presence of a modality of engagement that is autonomous and creative with regard to what you’re aiming to achieve, and not derivative of what you’re aiming to replace” requires not being “invested […] in the system’s lures promises and rewards”²¹. It is thus without surprise that when conversations on the restructuring of publishing are coming from scientists and institutions at the very core of such systems, and which benefit from their overall maintenance, these conversations are so often unable to move beyond the derivative and the superficial, privileging instead “the kind of struggle that do not affect the regime of domination”²². This is why, even when deciding to tackle concepts charged with such transformative potential such as “resetting the concept of a paper in the modern age” (still quoting from the Developmental Biology editorial¹⁴), these are unable to come up with much more than a call for… easier submissions to APC-based journals. What is being called to be left to new generations, to the future of the field, is - in one way or another - easier ways to thrive in a broken system. The maintenance of those systems. These are failures in both leadership and vision, but not even just vision to the future²³, vision of the present revendications on the topic.

“For journals to continue to thrive, we simply must help authors get their work to publication”, cites the “Developmental Biology” editorial as an inspiring directive motivating the need for the changes proposed. Here is the point: i) we do not, in fact, owe anyone the continued existence of any given journal, and ii) we especially do not owe anyone the continued existence of journals that decided to sustain themselves through the alternative enforcement of economic barriers to access or to publication. We do not owe the continued existence of the business of knowledge exchange. If anything, what is owed to us are publication journals that are free to publish in and free to read (i.e. diamond open access journals), as they are already available in other fields and in other parts of the world, and the development, encouragement, and value of journal-independent publication processes²⁴. What is owed to us, is a publishing discourse that is not, at best, so superficial and oblivious to its wider context, at worst concealing²⁵. What is owed to us is a field that chooses to favour community over commercialisation. It’s clearer than ever that this cannot come from a DevBio community organised around, and dependent on, its own complicit commercialisation.

Afterword: message to fellow DevBio ECRs

• The fact that most DevBio community journals are refusing to not put a paywall to the research that we provide to them for publication, unless they are paid 3000/4000$ (from us, from our universities, or from other people’s universities), is insulting. It is against our needs and interests. It is gross and not asked for. It is an act of capitalist violence from people/systems that believe they should derive money from the free circulation of academic knowledge. As stated above, we do not owe the continued sustenance of the business of science publishing. In fact we owe it to ourselves and to each other not to continue to participate in such practices. And yes, our current journals reinvest and reinject in the community, but they should have not extracted in the first place. Yes, our current journals publish amazing and cool papers, but these same papers could be published by places that prioritise the true interests of the community, and whose mission is to publish as freely and as widely as technically possible (i.e. diamond open access venues, or through preprints or any other journal-independent means). And yes, our current journals do nucleate communities, but there are differences between communities of customers (however “non-customers” they may feel) and communities whose interests are not weighted against the commercial ones of the entities that nucleate them. Communities whose best interests are in fact aligned with the publication model of their journal/society. For a start, they would be communities much more prone to discuss issues of equitability and non-capitalist approaches to publishing.

• Given that what is currently available to us in DevBio are not publishing models that truly serve the best interests of the community, what would such models ideally look like? Where can we find them? Publishing methods that truly serve the community would, clearly, not paywall the research we want to make public (why would we want our research to be paywalled?), would not ask us to pay to not let them put a paywall (when it should not be paywalled in the first place), and would not ask us to pay to read the research of others (access to knowledge should be free). Well, these publishing models already exist in the form of diamond open access journals, and through journal-independent strategies (as enacted, for example, through what I call prefigurative preprinting; see my essay “The pre in my preprint stands for prefigurative”²⁶). They are a material reality of other disciplines, they are not “utopian” or ”radical” any more than the radical attachment to revenue that characterises other models. They already exist, and the more we read, tell, inform each other of the how and where they exist, the more we can find ways to enact/demand them within DevBio or within our academic practice, and the more their absence in DevBio will be seen as something that can/should be changed, rather than an inevitability.

• This essay is clearly a critique of the manifest unpreparedness of current Global North DevBio leadership and institutions to lead on the topic of equitable publishing reform, exemplified by the very fact that the field is in open conflict with current national and international directives, and lagging behind the progress in journal independent and diamond open access publication in other disciplines. It is increasingly clear that we (ECRs) might thus instead be the best placed to lead our own publishing future discourse, and we need to do that in ways consistent with it. For now this will have to be away- and around existing DevBio societies centred around publication as a business and as a source of revenue. Indeed, “we need to ask the difficult question of whether the means we rely on for addressing inequalities within the current system of academic knowledge production are […] consistent or coherent with our ends of unsettling the system”²⁰. We thus need to build these spaces among ourselves, create those very spaces and that very community where APCs are critiqued, where ongoing global publishing revendications are introduced as movements to fully embrace, where the development of our publication consciousness is a priority. Concomitantly, we need to also realise that the current means that are being employed by many in DevBio are not consistent nor coherent with the ends of unsettling the system, but rather with its maintenance. We need to be able to quickly identify them as such to be able to demand more and demand different.

• Crucially, the fact that very little in terms of alternative publishing options and progressive publishing discourse is made available to us from within and from top-down, does not mean we cannot seek leadership and vision on these topics elsewhere. In fact these are the topics of an extremely rich and life-breathing discourse in other disciplines and in other parts of the world. I personally recommend the work and publications of the knowledge equity lab⁵, and contextualised critiques of open access from equity and anti-capitalist lenses²⁷. Reading any of the editorials of the many collectives and individuals in other disciplines that have e.g. decided to create diamond open access journals (many linked in the first paragraphs of this post^{9 10}), brings inspiring perspectives on the motivations behind change, and on the material aspect of what this can look like in practice. I recommend getting familiar with- and participating in the myriad of initiatives on post-publication peer-review, journal independent publication, preprint journal clubs. Comfortingly, as gaslighting it may be to move within academic disciplines/environments that are so impervious to this type of discourse, turning literally almost anywhere else will show us that many scientists are in fact already in-difference to capitalist models of scientific publication, and that “many people not only [already] resist, but also build worlds that live by better and more just and equitable rules.”²¹ It is our turn to join them.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The header banner image is by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash.

These blogposts are written in my personal capacity. The views and opinions expressed here are my own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my University, my Lab, PI, colleagues, or those of the members of any association or society I am affiliated with. .