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Contribution short abstract:

The February Journal is a peer-reviewed open access independent publication. Its predecessor was shut down in the wake of the war on Ukraine. We will discuss challenges of publishing young and paradigm-breaking content beyond institutional affiliations in the face of censorship and safety concerns.

Contribution long abstract:

An independent publication, The February Journal is peer-reviewed and available in open access. Anthropological perspectives play a central role in the journal’s interdisciplinary scope. It was created in 2019 as The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture, at Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. With the beginning of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent introduction of wartime censorship in Russia, The Garage Journal was shut down. The archive and platform rights were transferred to the journal’s team, who used the existing platform to launch the new publication.

There are four themes that we would like to discuss. First, the benefits of the journal’s

extra-institutionality and the limits that its no-funding existence imposes. The team are volunteers, and production costs are currently not covered. The second issue is the priority we give to early career researchers. This does not mean that the journal publishes younger researchers only; however, early-career professionals’ contributions receive comprehensive editorial attention before and after peer-review. A third topic to discuss is innovative research, which often involves experimental methodologies, transgressive treatments of genre and form, and speculative approaches. Although perhaps an independent publication's key benefit, innovative research can also present a challenge, especially when combined with the still somewhat distrustful attitude to open-access journals in academia. Finally, we will invoke the issue of security, which – in our specific case, with some editors and authors coming from Russia or having families there – must be given primary importance.