As a thought experiment, I invite readers to recall the following historical facts: Before slavery was abolished, people across both the North and South of the USA advocated for slavery, and even rationalized it. Their rationalizations included the following:
Slavery had been around since ancient times, accepted and practiced by respectable, revered, and religious figures in history, so why raise any questions about its morality?
Slavery was an economic necessity without which there would be widespread unemployment leading to social chaos, and the economy would eventually collapse.
Slaveholders were benevolent toward their slaves, providing them with subsistence and shelter. Slavery was actually beneficial for the slaves themselves; it was not just right but also necessary for them. In fact, it was argued that “slavery was on balance a blessing” (Brophy, 2016, p. 242).
Slavery and its rationalizations were not unique to the US context. The same arguments were used by slave owners all over the world because of the human tendency to rationalize the current state of affairs, or the status quo bias. While this analogy may strike some readers as odd, I argue that parallel axiologies, ontologies, epistemologies, visions, logic, and interests are used today in academic publishing to maintain the status quo in favor of what I call
Publishers have supported academia for a long time, and respected figures in academia continue to contribute to their journals and books, so why would this industry suddenly be seen as unethical?
Publishers provide essential financial, logistic, administrative, and symbolic support to maintain journals and books, and without it academic publishing would collapse.
Publishers benevolently sponsor conferences and scholarships and graciously offer discounts, bundling agreements, and free or reduced-access access to certain regions.
Considering these parallels, I argue that it is not much of a stretch to make comparisons between the publishing industry and modern slavery, at least for scholars in the Global South. In legal terms, modern slavery refers to a variety of exploitative conditions such as involuntary domestic servitude, early marriage, debt bondage, and forced labor, with some estimating that there are about 50 million slaves worldwide today. What is common among these conditions is that the individual does not have alternative options. In academia, researchers obtain public funding, do the hard work of conducting research and reporting it, and then submit the fruits of their labor to the journal for free (or
I believe that, just like slavery, people in the future will look back in outrage, horror, and disgust at this situation and how it was rationalized before paywalls were “abolished.” I agree wholeheartedly with Andringa et al.’s (2024) argument regarding the moral obligation that researchers, particularly senior ones, have in redressing this state of affairs. Access to learning, knowledge, and scholarship constitutes an unalienable human right (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 2020). Nevertheless, I also believe that relying on the goodwill of researchers to spontaneously engage in this reform movement may be too optimistic. Global North researchers are not the ones directly afflicted by this system, and so meaningful action to reform it may be slow. Real change, if it occurs, will most likely require a multi-year and multi-pronged push – metaphorically comparable to the Civil War struggle – against the oligopoly and its various manifestations, as Big Publisha with its army of lawyers, consultants, and strategists will not passively acquiesce and will apply every trick up their sleeves to maintain their business model and its enormous profits.
In this piece, I propose a three-stage roadmap to achieve diamond open access status fieldwide. I see this moral project in line with recent advocacy that positions and frames open access as an ethical imperative (De Costa, 2024; Plonsky, 2024). A primary element of this ethical project is citation practices. Since research that violates ethical principles should be retracted regardless of its rigor (COPE Council, 2019), citing unethical research could be seen as equally problematic. This is because citation additionally marks the credibility of the researchers, the process of publication, and the publication venue. (Incidentally, this is also why citing research from predatory journals is questionable.) To take another historical example, there is significant controversy surrounding the ethics of citing findings from Nazi research that have survived, despite the demise of the Nazis many decades ago. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine similar ethical questions arising from relying on and citing hypothetical research findings from ISIS in Syria, the US Public Health Service at Tuskegee, and torture in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or in Abu Ghraib, Iraq (Caplan, 2021), where the involvement of academics in such atrocities has caused a considerable outcry (e.g., see the Hoffman Report; Hoffman et al., 2015). Perhaps the most moderate position in this regard is to “use the findings only in circumstances where the scientific validity is clear and where there is no alternative source of information” (Moe, 1984, p. 7).
Stage 1 of this roadmap is preparation. This is comparable to what Andringa et al. (2024) have proposed. It includes establishing new diamond open access journals, supporting them by proactively submitting, citing, and proposing special issues, as well as flipping journals that are not owned by publishers (e.g.,
This preparation stage is crucial before moving to the next stage can have a meaningful impact. Admittedly, I myself routinely contribute to and engage with Big Publisha journals, and halting such contributions will only harm my own career. The same is true for most colleagues. The field needs to reach critical mass. I view this as a
Stage 2 is migration, focusing primarily on citation practices. Impact factors constitute an important element of the allure of many Big Publisha journals (Xu et al., 2023), and citations serve as the lifeblood of these impact factors. This means that we researchers hold the power. Targeting citations may be a more effective strategy than outright boycotting of journals, a lesson learned from the Cost of Knowledge initiative (see Al-Hoorie & Hiver, 2023), especially considering that citation in academia is, for all intents and purposes, already gamed to death (Al-Hoorie & Hiver, in press; Macdonald, 2022). Refraining from citing Big Publisha journals, particularly articles published in the last two years (the period that actually counts toward impact factor calculation), on ethical grounds would strategically lower these impact factors. In many cases in applied linguistics, not citing research from specific Big Publisha journals within the most recent two years should not pose a significant challenge or be met with too much objection, and exceptions can still be made when no alternatives are available – as argued by Moe (1984). These exceptions will most likely be needed in rare cases, given the numerous alternatives established at Stage 1, with the majority of senior scholars having already migrated to these alternatives. The groundwork will have been laid. The outcome of this stage is a sustained decrease in the impact factors of Big Publisha journals and an increase in the impact factors of diamond open access journals (as citations are redirected to them), all the while discouraging still-hesitant authors from contributing to Big Publisha. In brief, Stage 2 aims to make contributing indiscriminately to Big Publisha increasingly stigmatized.
At Stage 3, with the established infrastructure in place and the incentives realigned, the field will be ready to up its game. This stage involves associations and institutions formally and proactively discouraging their members from publishing or engaging in Big Publisha journals. “Violators” will face consequences (e.g., in hiring, promotion, and tenure) as they will be asked to justify why they have decided to support these journals. These researchers would be intentionally providing their research labor to for-profit publishers pro bono to keep them behind paywalls despite the availability of alternatives – in effect siding with Big Publisha.
If history is any indication, it is possible that Stage 3 will also witness the rise of grassroots activism spontaneously. Open scholarship advocates might deal with violators through direct advocacy campaigns that send repeated and targeted messages to them, their collaborators, and superiors informing them of their unethical actions, championing the alternatives in the field’s publishing ecosystem, and using various disincentives to hold them accountable. Indeed, we have seen in recent years similar activism for lesser causes, with individuals in higher ranking positions in academia forced to resign or to rethink and reform their positions as a result.
Nevertheless, at Stage 3 it should be obvious that Big Publisha journals are, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, no longer an attractive option given their lower impact factors and limited circulation due to paywalls – even without the need to consider the ethical issues involved. Once this infrastructure for open access publishing is established and the incentives are realigned, one has to be suffering from moral schizophrenia if they justify publishing in closed-access journals (“I agree that these journals are unethical, and I agree that there is no pressing academic value to support or cite them, but I still see no problem in doing that”). The three-stage roadmap is summarized in Table 1.
The three-stage roadmap
|
Stage 1 |
Field Preparation |
Providing alternatives: Setting up and supporting diamond journals to provide alternatives to closed-access ones |
|
Stage 2 |
Citation Migration |
Rerouting citations: Refraining from citing articles published closed-access journals in the previous two years, unless it is unavoidable |
|
Stage 3 |
Formal Activism |
Holding researchers accountable: Consequences to those who insist on contributing to closed-access journals without a valid reason |
I have a dream, a dream of ethical and equitable scholarship where readers from both the Global North and South have equal access to academic literature and empirical knowledge. Following the footsteps and inspiration of the visionary advocate for 20th century civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I remind readers that access to knowledge and education is a fundamental human right, and paywalls represent a blatant violation of that right.
This commentary has presented one perspective from the Global South. Readers from the Global North may not appreciate the struggles of Global South scholars, and many may be appalled by the idea of making parallels to modern slavery. But Global South issues should not be reframed to accommodate Global North sensibilities, which would be a form of epistemic violence (Barnawi & R’boul, 2024). I cannot tell whether this proposal will ever reach fruition, and I would be naïve to set timelines as it necessitates the collective responsibility of the entire field, and particularly the proactive action by Global South scholars themselves. The future will look back at people surprised by this proposal just as we look back as people surprised by the idea of emancipation.
I would like to thank Phil Hiver, Luke Plonsky, and Othman Barnawi for their feedback on an earlier draft. Views expressed here are mine only.