EDITORIAL
Opening science:
The rebirth of a scholarly journal
Ludo Waltman1
, Vincent Larivière2
, Staša Milojević2, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto3
1Editor-in-Chief of QSS
2Associate Editor of QSS
3President of ISSI
Journal of Informetrics ( JOI) was created in 2006 to serve the dynamic, interdisciplinary, et
rapidly growing field of informetrics (Egghe, 2005, 2006un, 2006b, 2015). Leo Egghe, le
founding Editor-in-Chief of JOI, attributed this growth to the increasing attraction of “scientists
from fields such as mathematics, physics and computer sciences, thereby considerably in-
creasing the number of researchers engaged in informetrics” (Egghe, 2006b, p. 4) ainsi que
“the vast increase of the ways in which electronic information is created, distributed and
used” (Egghe, 2006b, p. 3). Almost fifteen years later, the developments that Egghe observed
have transformed not only the field of informetrics, but the entire scholarly dissemination
ecosystem.
Dans 2006, green open access publishing was marginal outside of a few discrete disciplines,
such as physics and mathematics, and gold and hybrid journals were still in their infancy
(Piwowar et al., 2018). Scholarly publishing was just on the verge of moving from a more dis-
tributed, society-based ecosystem to one that was heavily consolidated in a few for-profit pub-
lishers (Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon, 2015); it is no surprise that Elsevier was a natural
partner for the establishment of JOI. Major publishers were heralding their ‘big deals’ to librar-
ies and the negative financial and intellectual consequences of these deals had not yet reached
a tipping point. Par 2019, cependant, the misalignment in values between the scholarly commu-
nity and large profit-driven publishers could no longer be ignored. This led to the collective
resignation of the editorial board of JOI and the founding of Quantitative Science Studies
(QSS).
The financial model of Elsevier has become untenable for the scientific community and, nous
argue, in violation of the scientific ethos. Its excessive subscription fees have caused journal
cancellations across the globe—from California to Germany (SPARC, 2020)—and Elsevier’s
article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing (currently USD 2000 at JOI)
do not represent a fair value for the cost. Publishing with Elsevier inevitably places major limits
on scholarship: The expense of the subscription model places a restriction on who can be a
reader of science, the expense of APCs restricts who can be an author. These restrictions on
access are harmful to science and society.
Our field depends on high-quality scientific metadata. To make our science more robust
and reproducible, these data must be as open as possible. Donc, our editorial board
was deeply concerned with the refusal of Elsevier to participate in the Initiative for Open
Citations (I4OC). Launched in April 2017, I4OC promotes the open availability of citation
data, which is a core source of information for scientometric analysis. Elsevier is the largest
contributor of citation data, representing about a third of all references in Crossref (Tennant,
2018). While almost all other large publishers have joined I4OC, Elsevier argues that, given its
un accès ouvert
journal
Citation: Waltman, L., Larivière, V.,
Milojević, S., & Sugimoto, C. R.. (2020).
Opening Science: The Rebirth of a
Scholarly Journal. Quantitative Science
Études, 1(1), 1–3. https://est ce que je.org/
10.1162/qss_e_00025
EST CE QUE JE:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_e_00025
droits d'auteur: © 2020 Ludo Waltman,
Vincent Larivière, Staša Milojević, et
Cassidy R. Sugimoto. Publié sous
une attribution Creative Commons 4.0
International (CC PAR 4.0) Licence.
La presse du MIT
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Rebirth of a scholarly journal
investments in citation extraction technology and the value it adds, it cannot make citation
data available for free (Reller, 2019).
The community’s perspective on this is unambiguous: Hundreds of scientometricians have
signed a letter urging scholarly publishers to support I4OC (ISSI, 2017). Scientometrics has
historically been constrained by limitations in data access, and by preventing access to the
field’s primary data, Elsevier is acting against the interests of the field and science at large.
We understand that Elsevier has shareholders that expect the company to maximize its profits.
Profit maximization does not inherently prevent acting in the good of science. Cependant, par
refusing to open its citation data, Elsevier has chosen to protect the interests of its shareholders
while disregarding the interests of other stakeholders, in particular the scholarly community.
Ce faisant, Elsevier fails to take its scientific and social responsibility seriously.
The ultimate responsibility for a scholarly journal should fall with the scientific community,
who serve as the gatekeepers, producers, and consumers of scientific content. While JOI pros-
pered under Elsevier’s ownership, our community had only limited autonomy in managing the
journal and deciding about its future direction. Editors were appointed by Elsevier, not by the
community, and we increasingly experienced Elsevier’s desire to impose one-size-fits-all so-
lutions on its journals. Par exemple, Elsevier mandated the use of their own manuscript sub-
mission system, which performed much worse than comparable systems and created
additional burdens for authors, reviewers, and the editorial board. Science is a self-governing
système; to function robustly, the scientific community must be given license to select and eval-
uate gatekeepers and to minimize burden on those engaging in service.
Donc, in a manner similar to the flip of the Elsevier journal Lingua into Glossa (Rooryck,
2016)—as well as other journals whose flips have been less publicized1—we decided that
these issues were important enough to terminate our relationship with Elsevier. Together with
the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI), the editorial board worked
to find a new home for our journal. We approached several publishers and publishing
platforms, and MIT Press provided us with attractive conditions under which we believe the
journal will thrive.
As an open access journal, QSS will be freely available for readers worldwide. With an APC
of USD 800 (or USD 600 for ISSI members), QSS is more affordable for authors to publish in
than many other journals. Thanks to a collaboration with the Fair Open Access Alliance
(FOAA), in the first three years of the journal, APCs will be covered by the Technische
Informationsbibliothek (TIB) – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology with
support from the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) of the University of
Konstanz. We will continue to seek opportunities to make publication open to all authors.
En outre, QSS is fully committed to making all metadata of the papers it publishes—not
just citation data but also affiliation data, abstracts, and so on—openly available in Crossref.
This will contribute to reproducibility and robustness in our field. Enfin, since QSS is owned
by the scholarly community through the ISSI, the community will make decisions about the
future direction of the journal. Important decisions, such as the appointment of new editors,
will be made by the community, not by the publisher.
Fifteen years ago, Leo Egghe noted the increasing diversity in the field of informetrics. Many
of the new entrants have now assembled under a host of different names: We hope that those
who identify under labels such as scientometrics, science of science (Fortunato et al., 2018),
1 See the list of journal’s ‘declarations of independence’ at http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/ Journal_
declarations_of_independence.
Études scientifiques quantitatives
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Rebirth of a scholarly journal
and metascience (Ioannidis, Fanelli, Dunne, & Homme bon, 2015) will all find a home in QSS.
We also recognize the diverse range of disciplines for whom science is an object of study:
We welcome historians of science, philosophers of science, and sociologists of science to
our journal. While we bear the moniker of quantitative, we are inclusive of a breadth of epis-
temological perspectives. Quantitative science studies cannot operate in isolation: Robust
empirical work requires the integration of theories and insights from all metasciences.
The flip from JOI to QSS is neither the first nor the last of its kind. There is a tremendous
Zeitgeist towards openness as the scientific community reasserts its role in the responsible gov-
ernance of the scientific record. We welcome discussion with other editorial boards and pro-
fessional societies as they grapple with these transformations. Publishers can also serve as
positive actors in this new environment: by adopting inclusive practices in publishing, provid-
ing adequate quality, and respecting the community’s autonomy. We hope that this flip not
only benefits our own community, but serves as a catalyst for positive change across the schol-
arly communication ecosystem.
The JOI/QSS flip has benefited from the help of many. First and foremost, we would like to
thank the members of our editorial board, who collectively embarked on this adventure.
Despite the uncertainty associated with the flip, they supported it unanimously and further
demonstrated their support by both reviewing for and submitting to QSS. We also wish to
thank the staff of MIT Press for their tremendous work in launching QSS. En particulier, nous
are grateful to Amy Brand, Director of MIT Press, and Nick Lindsay, Director of Journals
and Open Access at MIT Press, who have been incredibly supportive. Enfin, we wish to
thank Johan Rooryck, Editor-in-Chief of Glossa and President of the FOAA, and Saskia de
Vries, Project Leader at the FOAA, for their inspiration and assistance, as well as Marco
Tullney, Head of Publishing Services at the TIB, for organizing generous financial support
for QSS.
RÉFÉRENCES
Egghe, L. (2005). Expansion of the field of informetrics: Origins and
consequences. Information Processing and Management, 41(6),
1311–1316.
Egghe, L. (2006un). Expansion of the field of informetrics: The second
probleme special. Information Processing and Management, 42(6),
1405–1407.
Egghe, L. (2006b). The new Journal of Informetrics. ISSI Newsletter,
2(2), 3–4.
Egghe, L. (2015). Message from the retiring Editor-in-Chief. Journal
of Informetrics, 9(1), A1–A2.
Fortunato, S., Bergstrom, C. T., Börner, K., Evans, J.. UN., Helbing, D.,
Milojevic´ , S., … Barabási, A.-L. (2018). Science of science.
Science, 359, eaao0185.
Ioannidis, J.. P., Fanelli, D., Dunne, D. D., & Homme bon, S. N.
(2015). Meta-research: Evaluation and improvement of research
methods and practices. PLOS Biology, 13(10), e1002264.
ISSI. (2017). Open citations: A letter from the scientometric community
to scholarly publishers. Extrait de http://issi-society.org/open-
citations-letter/.
Larivière, V., Haustein, S., & Mongeon, P.. (2015). The oligopoly of ac-
ademic publishers in the digital era. PLOS ONE, 10(6), e0127502.
Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J.. P., Matthias, L.,
Norlander, B., … & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: UN
large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of open access
articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375.
Reller, T. (2019). About the resignation of the Journal of Infor-
metrics editorial board. Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.
com/connect/about-the-resignation-of-the-journal-of-informetrics-
editorial-board.
Rooryck, J.. (2016). Introducing Glossa. Glossa, 1(1), 1.
SPARC. (2020). Big deal cancellation tracking. Retrieved from
https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-cancellation-tracking/.
Tennant, J.. (2018). Democratising knowledge: A report on the
scholarly publisher, Elsevier. Education International Research.
Retrieved from https://www.norrag.org/democratising-knowledge-
a-report-on-the-scholarly-publisher-elsevier-by-dr-jonathan-
tennant/.
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