Journals play a key role in the creation and preservation of the academic record. But do we still need them?

There is an ongoing discussion in the community about whether all publicly funded research articles must be made freely available on publication, as a pre-final version (the accepted manuscript) if not the final published version. Cambridge University Press’s stock response is that, while we fully support all research being immediately published as open access, making accepted manuscripts open access without embargo is, at scale, not compatible with a sustainable, high quality journal publishing programme. But are we right to seek to protect the sustainability of this kind of programme, and what might happen if we did not?

We ask ourselves that question because, in the final analysis, we do not exist to perpetuate any particular approach to scholarly communication. Our mission is to further research and learning. How we do it becomes a matter of what the academic community needs.

If our work as a university press is to lead to improved scholarly communication, we must work hand-in-hand with other parts of the academic ecosystem, such as the DORA movement which aims to overhaul how research and researchers are evaluated and incentivized. The academic ecosystem is highly interconnected; none of us acting alone could achieve much in fixing the flaws in present-day scholarly communication.

That said, we are excited to be exploring some new forms of publishing (more on this below). As we do so, we are mindful about something that is particularly precious to the community: the academic record. This collection of facts, assertions and ideas most likely to be worth sharing and preserving forms the ground on which new knowledge is built. While it is tempting to focus on the utopia of opportunities that information technology can offer, the academic record is not, and must not become, an algorithmically clustered pot of uncurated, increasingly unreliable content.

The academic record should, however, be open. We have stated our commitment to open research in, we hope, unquestionable terms (for example here). We are working towards making our entire journals programme open access, as fast as we can. It is not yet certain how quickly we will do it, and some parts will probably move faster than others. Our chosen route is to focus on the final published versions (Gold OA), because we see that as financially sustainable. Making pre-final versions open access without embargo (Green OA) is not sustainable because of its dependence on subscriptions to closed journal content.

Evidently, the process of a manuscript moving through a journal from ‘submitted’ form to ‘accepted’ adds enough value for the manuscript to become worthy of formally entering the academic record as a citable, career-building publication. Creating the accepted manuscript requires infrastructures, both human and technological, with coordinated teams of academic experts and other dedicated specialists. Creating the accepted manuscript costs money.

The subsequent publishing processes, from acceptance to publication and beyond, are, we argue, equally important for the overall functioning of scholarly communication, and they also cost money. Journals perform vital post-acceptance quality checks. Figures can be corrected, and references checked and associated with the rest of the academic record. Sometimes, critical information such as author lists and article titles are changed. Best-practice boxes are ticked off: is the data available, and was patient consent obtained? Some of the post-acceptance processes could be better automated, and will be. But we doubt that readers would be happy with an academic record riddled with poor practice, errors and misinformation that could easily have been picked up by trained, dedicated specialists.

Bringing both parts of current publishing processes together, the creation of the accepted manuscript and the subsequent quality control, dissemination and preservation, allows us to create an academic record that is much more than an unstructured folder of poorly curated information. Every reputable journal provides a unique setting for authors to share their work with their peers and the wider community. Each journal represents a different type of content, chosen according to a distinct set of considerations and community needs. While journals must strive to improve, it is for good reasons that they have become one of the most proven routes for generating usage and impact and, ultimately, creating the academic record.

We do not assume that traditional concepts of journals, or the business models that sustain them, are the only conceivable ways for the academic record to be created and preserved. Indeed, we are moving to a more diverse and service-based approach to publishing, working with urgency and in partnership with our community to explore opportunities to improve scholarly communication. One example of this is our transformation from a subscription based model for journals to a Read and Publish model that supports a migration to open access. Another example is our recently launched Cambridge Open Engage, a collaborative platform for the rapid dissemination of early research outputs and other content. A third illustration of our development is that we are taking greater strides in making it easier for people to discover, access, and make better use of content for example through text and data mining. We are busy.

As we explore new opportunities, we are resolute that before the journal-based system can be retired, any new approach to creating and preserving the academic record must be fully operational. No replacement has yet been devised and proven.

And that is why we believe that a zero-embargo Green OA approach to open research is not a route to a sustainable future for scholarly communication. Certainly not yet, and possibly not ever.

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Visit our webpages for more information on open research and publishing Open Access or contact openresearch@cambridge.org.