03.11.2021
Open Access for the non-English-speaking World
Open access is not only about barrier-free access to research by readers, it’s also about barrier-free access by researchers to publishing their research. Barriers to researchers publishing can include high author payment charges (APCs), lack of support to write and publish in one’s native language or about one’s local context, and lack of access to research literature that is in one’s native language and relevant to one’s local context. A healthy, equitable, and open scholarly publishing landscape includes a diversity of researchers, content, and journals.
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) supports this diversity by developing and maintaining Open Journal Systems (OJS), a free and open source software application for publishing scholarly journals online. (…)
OJS is used by over 25,000 journals worldwide, with the majority of these journals located in the global south. The recent study by OPERAS on diamond open access journals (journals that charge no subscription fees or APCs) found that 38% of open access diamond journals are multilingual (publishing in several languages), compared to only 14% of APC-based journals, and 60% of diamond open access journals use OJS.
