The OAPEN Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that operates out of the Netherlands. Its aim is ‘to achieve a sustainable publication model for academic books in humanities and social sciences and to improve the visibility and usability of high-quality academic research in Europe.’ OAPEN also operates the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), a discovery service indexing OA books. Before these books are published and indexed, however, they must be peer-reviewed. Peer review in open access book publishing is a crucial step, ensuring academic validity and accuracy.

But how do we make this process smoother and more beneficial to both authors and publishers? What are the current issues with peer review in open access book publishing, and what could possibly be done to resolve them? We sat down with Jordy Findanis and Laura Bandura-Morgan from OAPEN and DOAB to discuss what is being done to develop and strengthen peer review practices, respecting bibilodiversity by adopting flexible approaches to peer review, what authors should look for when choosing publishers, and how Generative AI may be utilised in the future to improve peer review in open access book publishing.

Let’s begin with OAPEN’s general approach to peer review. Are there specific actions OAPEN takes to advocate for high standards of peer review within the open access monograph publishing community? Are there any initiatives or collaborations OAPEN is involved in that aim to enhance peer review standards?

Our stakeholders across the globe, including book publishers, libraries, funders, service providers, scholars and researchers, and the scientific community at large, have entrusted to us the custodianship and responsibility of ensuring that the scholarship we host and disseminate has been subjected to rigorous academic standards. We do not take this responsibility lightly, advocating for the importance of peer review in our daily operations and via presentations, conferences, workshops, webinars, blogs and articles.

An important resource serving the promotion of high-quality scholarship is OAPEN’s Open Access Books Toolkit, a stakeholder-agnostic resource dedicated to providing information and best practices for all aspects of book publishing, including a dedicated section on peer review.

In addition to enhancing review practices and book publishing in general, OAPEN is strongly committed to countering questionable book publishing practices by raising awareness about sustained threats represented by predatory publishing activities that risk undermining a healthy and robust scholarly ecosystem.

In addition to the OAPEN Library, which hosts peer-reviewed academic books, OAPEN also seeks to further develop and strengthen peer review practices through another platform it operates, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), an open aggregation index currently listing peer-reviewed scholarly books by more than 700 book publishers. In addition to promoting the dissemination of scholarship, a central mission of DOAB is also to build trust through transparency in open access book publishing. A service designed to support this is PRISM, the Peer Review Information Service for Monographs, which allows publishers to display the type of peer review performed at publisher as well as at book level across their list. The service is thus also designed to accommodate the fact that peer review is not a static and monolithic entity, but something that may come in many different flavours, reflecting the rich and heterogeneous nature of scholarship itself.

OAPEN and DOAB will continue to support best practices for peer review and research integrity as part of our advocacy when engaging with stakeholders in diverse projects and networks around the world. 

How does OAPEN collaborate with publishers to ensure that the books hosted on your platform maintain a high academic standard? What are the most common issues that lead to a publisher not being approved?

Quality assurance of academic books and the promotion of high quality research are central to OAPEN and DOAB. To ensure high academic standards of the books submitted by publishers to our collections, internal and external workflows have been set in place that manage the quality assessment process. When reviewing applications to OAPEN, one of the central assessment criteria is the evaluation of the publisher’s peer review policy. We require that peer review is performed by referees external to the publishing house or entity and also ask for the peer review policy to be made publicly available on the publisher’s website as well as on OAPEN’s website.

The importance of trust is also reflected by the community of platforms that currently constitute the DOAB Trusted Platform Network, including the OAPEN Library, OpenEdition, Project MUSE, SciELO Books, JSTOR, African Platform for Open Scholarship, Fulcrum and Thoth Open Metadata. In addition to enhancing the discoverability of open access books and creating a more seamless process for publishers to list their books in DOAB, the network benefits significantly from the access to evaluation support and local expertise within different national and regional publishing contexts. This is a vital mechanism for maintaining high academic standards across very different research and publishing communities, while also fostering diversity.

As we receive applications from a very diverse range of publishers across the world, representing a myriad of research disciplines, languages and publishing configurations, a bespoke application review procedure has been developed. In addition to the main requirements, we also look at the publisher more holistically, reviewing their website for peer review and licencing information, editorial processes, mission statement, whether open access titles are accessible without registration, composition of scientific boards, potential conflicts of interest, and we also check whether links are broken, if there is contact information, dedicated email addresses, etc. On the basis of the main requirements and the holistic appraisal, we make a decision, which is often followed by conversations with the publisher.

By applying rigorous evaluation processes and practices, we strive to uphold the high standards that our stakeholders, including the publisher and the scientific community at large, expect from us. However, we are conscious that these practices should not inadvertently entrench already existing inequities. It is central to OAPEN and DOAB’s mission to promote diversity, equity and inclusion within scholarly communication. In this capacity, we are committed to putting mechanisms in place that respect bibliodiversity in its broadest sense: appreciating and accommodating disparities in relation to the diverse typology of books, languages, the role of the publishing editor, variegated editorial processes, different peer review practices, technical standards etc. This further entails that we can offer necessary guidance, serve as good consultants and also support publishers who act in good faith and who align on shared principles of quality.

What advice would you give authors looking to find a publisher that will ensure a rigorous peer review process?

This is a very important stage in the publishing cycle and something that should be given careful consideration. The OAPEN OA Books Toolkit would be a good place to start as it contains dedicated sections offering guidance on how to select a publisher. Irrespective of whether a book is open access or not, it is critical that authors choose a publisher who is trusted, credible and applies rigorous quality assurance standards. Authors should take care to avoid predatory and vanity publishing and they should review the prospective publisher to assess if they have experience publishing in the relevant research discipline, but also checking information on submission guidelines, governance, mission statements, ethics and code of conduct, editorial and review practices and procedures, dissemination, metadata management and composition of editorial boards. Peer review is not an isolated practice, but something that is importantly linked to a range of wider aspects related to book publishing.

Also, as mentioned in relation to PRISM, it is important to be mindful of the fact that there is no single peer review practice for books. They come in a variety of forms and may be performed differently depending on factors such as the particular research field in question, national and regional contexts, language, as well as on the typology of the book (e.g., monograph, edited collection, experimental publication, textbook). 

Think. Check. Submit, OASPA and also the COPE guidelines can be consulted for further information and guidance on adopting good practices for peer review of which authors should be cognizant when approaching and working with a publisher. Authors can also use other resources available to them via local publisher associations, research libraries, societies in local publishing cultures and communities. With the proliferation of open access initiatives around the world, more bespoke resources are currently being developed, for example within the Copim Open Books Futures project, which is currently building a helpful toolkit and resource, also called the Copim Compass, that will aim to scope, develop, but also consolidate and signpost helpful and free resources, aiding open access practitioners operating in a complex landscape.

How does OAPEN see the future of peer review evolving in the context of open access book publishing? What trends or changes do you anticipate in how peer review is conducted or evaluated?

It is more important than ever to safeguard scholarship and academic publishing against misinformation and questionable practices, which can cause irreparable damage to scientific credibility and legitimacy in the face of imminent societal challenges. In terms of potential changes that could be brought about by Generative AI, the short answer is that we simply don’t know yet. However, like other stakeholders, infrastructure providers and actors in the publishing community, we will follow developments closely. It is quite possible that in the near future Generative AI may be able to innovate certain processes around review practices and help mitigate inequities and biases and support the review system in a more sustainable and equitable way, such as using resources that can streamline workflows, lessen the workloads of reviewers, increase the reviewer pool through new languages tools (thus encouraging multilingualism), and flag biases and questionable practices. The possibilities are many, but so are the dangers, thus calling for optimism and vigilance at the same time.

Similarly, it is difficult to predict how different review practices are trending and will apply in the future. This is very much dependent on other factors, including the research discipline. As PRISM and similar services grow – including peer review documentation via metadata (which some providers are already enabling) – it should prove easier to identify trends and do benchmarking that respects diversity. With the acceleration and growth of open access outputs over the next years, we envisage that more publishers will be experimenting with different modes of reviewing, e.g. open peer review, developing and fine-tuning practices that can be applied sustainably and with necessary economies of scale.

Another point that needs to be stressed concerns reviewers. As guarantors of quality assurance, they are essential to the scholarly ecosystem, yet the expertise, resources and amount of time they invest in review activities (which can be quite considerable given that we are dealing with longform publications) is for the most part done con amore. Reviewers are genuinely committed to supporting the scholarship of their peers working in the same field and thus supporting their respective scholarly communities (as they, in turn, are supported by their peers). Their efforts, however, are underappreciated and not sufficiently recognised in current institutional assessment and incentive contexts. This is the subject of important work currently being conducted by one of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) working groups, whose outputs will develop principles and guidelines for recognising and rewarding peer review activities and their integration within research assessment practices.

Finally, we would like to draw attention to a workshop on evaluation and criteria-setting practices – including, significantly, peer review – that DOAB recently co-convened with the Open Book Collective, inviting members from the DOAB Trusted Platform Network, initiatives within the Copim Open Book Futures project and a selection of other participants. A key issue raised concerned the myriad of criteria-setting practices in play within and across different stakeholder communities and the wider landscape of open scholarly communication. Although this can be seen as an expression of healthy heterogeneity, it can also be a source of potential tension as authors, publishers and other initiatives can potentially see themselves excluded from areas where dominant, usually Global North, criteria and practices prevail, further entrenching inequities. The participants in the workshop all expressed a strong interest in facilitating a global conversation, or community of practice, that seeks to bring together multiple actors in the field of quality assessment and criteria in open access book publishing. In our view, it is only through coordinating such a community of practice that we can hope to develop criteria-setting approaches fully capable of addressing the complexities of the globally diverse, but still all too uneven and inequitable scholarly system, fostering bibliodiversity while safeguarding scholarship.

Bios

Jordy Findanis is project manager at the OAPEN Foundation. He has worked in scholarly publishing for more than fifteen years and has managed most aspects of the publication process, including editing and production (print and digital content in different formats and for various platforms), distribution, fundraising and open access.

Jordy’s main tasks at OAPEN include publisher outreach. In this capacity, he is also part of the Copim Open Book Futures project (OBF), a community-driven project based at Lancaster University and funded by Research England Development (RED) and Arcadia. The collaborative project seeks to enhance open access infrastructures and promote bibliodiverse and equitable community-led approaches to open access book publishing.

Laura Bandura-Morgan is funder relations manager at the OAPEN Foundation. Her focus is engaging with research funders to create a forum to share ideas and experiences related to open access book infrastructure developments in support of policy implementation.

She was a long-term employee of the National Science Centre, a governmental funding agency in Poland. Apart from her duties as a head of the audit and compliance team, she has focused mainly on developing and implementing guidelines and policies on research integrity, data management and open access. She was a member of Science Europe Working Groups on open data and open infrastructure and was involved in the work of cOAlition S task groups.

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