Short abstract

What forms of transparency, over what data, might make academic publishing more robust? We build on researchers’ use of publishers’ data to explore how transparency might enhance rigour, challenge commercial pressures and improve the governance of academic publishing.

Long abstract

This panel builds on the experience of researching and writing a paper recently published in QSS called 'The Strain on Scientific Publishing'. This paper analysed trends in publishers activity based in part on all indexed academic publications from 2016-2022 and web-scraped information on the vast majority of all published papers by the leading eight publishers. But the process of collecting our data raises important questions about the meaning and nature of transparency. What information is required for publishers, and researchers, to be held to account for their actions? And what sorts of institutions might best provide oversight of this behaviour? Or, to put this differently, publishing wrestles with the dilemmas of publishing rigorously produced work, as well as the need to be profitable. These conflicting interests need to be effectively governed. In what contexts, and in what ways, might improved transparency provide that oversight? This panel explores the methods which can render publishing more transparent, the ethical dilemmas these raise, and the oversight of the data resulting that might contribute to producing an academic publishing ecosystem its contributors would enjoy building.