Thank you, Mark. I support every line of this text.

Having seen the time it took for people in the North seriously to take 
undertakings such as SciELO, Redalyc, Amelica, CLACSO and so on, I know 
what it means to rely exclusively on WoS or SCOPUS metrics, and submit 
to the infamous impact factor.

Thank you again.

Jean-Claude Guédon

On 2024-02-06 05:13, Mark Huskisson wrote:
> Thanks, Glenn.
>
> It wasn't so much a comparison of apples and oranges that led me to stay up past my bedtime, but the way that publishing from LMICs is characterised in forums such as this in Europe and North America. The inculcation of negative or pejorative phrases for research output from LMICs such as "Not all of these low-cost journals are predatory, of course" feeds a hugely problematic narrative that we need to be extremely careful about.
>
> I know you need more evidence, but to characterize a thriving ecosystem of scholarly communication and research output from the majority of the world because it is not visible via "the Scopus-dominated, WoS-dominated, pay to play world of modern scholarship" troubles me. As a starting point, it assumes that legitimacy is only achieved if journals appear in commercial indexes. Sentences such as "open journals that mirror quality subscription journals" add to the implication that quality is primarily achieved via mirroring the quality that can only achieved by participating in the publishing industry that relies upon subscriptions and APCs.
>
> I don't argue with the statement that "APCs may be a barrier to OA publication by researchers from low-income countries", but it again frames the output on the terms applied by the Global North and its publishing industry. The argument back in 2014 was that the legitimacy of research publishing is only available through the self-regulated and professionalised brands of publishing houses in North America and Europe – and to participate required an ability to pay and if you couldn't pay then there was philanthropic help available from the generous donors in the north. And continuing to perpetuate that narrative a decade on troubles me.
>
> By only accepting a universe that is defined by a legitimacy that is bestowed upon journals indexed in Scopus/WoS we ignore the vast (far larger) publishing ecosystem that has grown over the last decade outside of the view of our commercial systems in the North. Better indexing is definitely needed and Dimensions seems to have accelerated beyond WoS/Scopus in this regard (I think Dimensions now indexes over 60% of those 46k journals previously mentioned). The current commercial indexes which define this universe of acceptability limit the visibility of scholarship not in English, written in right-to-left text, by researchers where there is no access to APC funds (or knowledge of or willingness to rely upon philanthropy), and where the capacity to publish does not rely on the generosity of the 'publishing industry' in the Global North. It is self-built and sustainable (and we can discuss separately why the growth of Diamond OA has been so successful outside of the print-legacy publishing industry elsewhere in the Open Café).
>
> Our goals are similar I think and I'm happy to agree to disagree on the details. We appear to be coming to the subject from different directions so exploring these views and giving them oxygen in the public square is helpful. But I do take umbrage at the assumption that quality and legitimacy of published research are tied to the industry metrics of the North and until researchers in the South play by the rules of the publishing industry (inherently predicated on an ability to pay [or receive charity]) they will remain 'invisible' or get bundled into characterisations such as "Not all of these low-cost journals are predatory ... actually preferred the "deceptive" label ... weren't necessarily bad actors.".
>
> My suggestion would be to recalibrate our lens to see better and not dismiss the enormous wealth of global research taking place sustainably and at scale around the world outside of our own frame of reference and cessing to define legitimacy and quality based upon the commercial metrics of the publishing industry.
>
> Mark
>
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