Politics and Open Access Publishing

This roundtable explores the state of open access publishing in political science globally, with the diversity of traditions. These range from diamond models where scholars publish their work open access for free to the novelties of transformative agreements / publish & read deals where libraries subscribe but also buy open articles for their own institutions member, and innovative alternatives. The session also addresses policy that governs transformations to the open, such as the PlanS. Ultimately, after decades of open access movements in the publishing world, the future is not got a fixed course, but actors in the fields see the future of publishing uncertain. While super-profits of large publishing houses have been criticised as academic capitalism, academic communities sustaining and formed around journals in particular navigate their ways in these muddy waters. Opening access also poses challenges to organisations used to sustain themselves through subscription fees to their publications, and funds for article processing charges (APCs) are not equally available neither globally nor locally depending on researchers career phase, institution or funding.
The session introduces and discusses the results from the IPSA open access survey, preceeded by an open access conference in 2022. It also introduces the terminology of open access publishing to the IPSA community and opens space for discussing the future, and pathways and possibilities for a fair scholarly practice.