Paper short abstract:

The communication will begin by describing the reasons why these editorial boards have decided to stop collaborating with their publisher.It will then detail the fate of 'abandoned' journals and new journals. Finally, it will examine at how this 'liberation' fits into wider strategies.

Paper long abstract:

In 2001, SPARC produced a document entitled “Declaring Independence. A Guide to Creating Community-Controlled Science Journals ». This document was a toolkit to help editorial teams to move away from commercial publishers, in line with the Budapest Open Access Initiative call for “alternative journals”. More than two decades later, while thousands of new open access journals (commercial or community-owned) have been created, only a few dozens editorial boards have followed this independence path .However, they illustrate a contemporary transformation in scientific publication: the attempts by scientific communities to reappropriate distribution media.

The communication will begin by describing the reasons why these editorial boards have decided to stop collaborating with their publisher, which range from a demand for autonomy in the face of decisions deemed arbitrary to a rejection of licensing agreements and a disapproval of the publisher's general policies. It will then detail the fate of 'abandoned' journals (when relevant) and new journals in terms of survival, publication volume, disciplinary orientation and economic model (Gold APC, Diamond, Hybrid, Subscription). Finally, it will examine at how this 'liberation' fits into wider strategies, ranging from creating new journals from scratch to switch from publisher to publisher or to reincorporate disseminatoin for learned society journals.