Looking Forwards and Backwards: 10 Years of Publications

Dear Colleagues,

The last decade has witnessed unprecedented growth in scientific knowledge globally that has amounted to, among estimates, exponential growth that doubles every 15 years (Fortunato et al, 2018).  Underpinning this growth is the simultaneous growth in the number of scientific actors producing publications as well as the number of outlets available to publish and disseminate each byte of new research.  

Alongside this growth comes a parallel change in research and publication practices.  Indeed, the past decade has seen remarkable changes, from the challenges associated with Open Research practices stemming from the early days of the open access movement, increasing pressure to publish brought on by increased audits and measures of excellence, and a movement towards gaining better recognition and inclusion of research from the Global South.  At the same time, there is criticism of predatory publishing practices and the journals that give rise to this industry.  Here, Publications has weathered its own, unavoidable storm of criticism as a journal while simultaneously acting to disseminate studies that at times direct, explore, and expand our understanding of research integrity in scholarly publishing. 

Through these changes and debates, Publications has persisted.

However, an assessment of a journal should be based at the journal-level and reflect the practices, priorities, and values practiced in its editorial, review, and publication practices.  As such, much of the credit for this resilience goes to an incredibly committed Editorial Board and team [https://www.mdpi.com/journal/publications/editors], some of whom have been serving since the journal was established.  

In this Special Issue, which celebrates 10 years of Publications, we aim to highlight a few of the dimensions of change, not just in the publications that populate the literature, but also in the processes that brought them forth and those who were involved and their relative status.  As leaders in the field and as important change-agents in their own contexts, many of our own Editorial Board Members will author the contributions.  In each contribution, the authors will reflect on the changes in the scholarly publishing environment over the last 10 years as well as their experience within it.

Among the dimensions we have selected for such inspection are (1) the diverse subset of epistemic cultures in scholarly publishing. What it means to publish and what the relationship between knowledge and writing is and how it varies across communities and across publication venues. A further series of dimensions in diversity in research (2) deals with geographical, gender, career, and other disparities that shape publication opportunities and trajectories. Various forms of justice and injustice are written into publication trajectories through these avenues. Further exacerbating this are (3) ranking cultures, including metricization as well as measurement and publication assessments as they occur across research cultures and communities. Various transparency initiatives exist to help enhance and stimulate responsible publication practices, and accordingly, a lot of attention is given to strengthening and displaying (4) research integrity and studying and experimenting with various forms of (5) peer review. All of the aforementioned movements encounter one another under the banners of (6) open science and open access. However, the increased attention placed on open access publication and opening up the publication landscape also intersects with the growth of so-called (7) predatory publishers. 

The Special Issue that follows is not, and nor will it ever be, a complete overview of a decade of publication dynamics. Instead, it will help shed some light on the transitions that scientific publication has been going through and the directions it might take from here.  It is also hoped that this Special Issue will simultaneously reflect on the field’s evolution as well as provide a clear map of how Publications will act as a journal in the future.

References

Fortunato S, Bergstrom CT, Börner K, Evans JA, Helbing D, Milojević S, Barabási A-L (2018) Science of science. Science 359(6379):eaao018

Dr. Gemma Derrick
Dr. Bart Penders
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Publications is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.