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* Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
This article originates from a committee tasked with investigating the future of the Canadian Journal of Political Science under the current Open Access climate. It did not undergo peer review.
Introduction
Digital publishing is transforming how academic journals operate. Thanks to online platforms, the number of outlets for publishing scholarly work is growing rapidly. The concomitant push to adopt Open Access (OA) as the new standard for academic research dissemination is creating very real pressures on academic journals.
The purpose of OA is to make research as accessible as possible, so as to maximize its impact and public benefit. In principle, journals ought to support the OA movement. However, OA creates its own challenges for many journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) that not only publish high-quality, peer-reviewed articles to a specialized audience but also support the work of scholarly associations through the revenues they generate. As funding agencies around the world are making their research grants conditional on the publication of results in OA-compliant journals or platforms, the traditional business model of a number of journals is now under stress.
In Canada, the pressure for journals to adopt OA standards is very real. As of 2015, the Tri-Council Agency requires that peer-reviewed journal publications resulting from any of its grants be freely accessible online through a public repository and/or directly on publishers’ websites within 12 months of publication (Government of Canada, 2016). The Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture adopted a similar policy for its own grant recipients beginning in early 2019 (FRQSC, 2019). Of more direct and immediate impact for scholarly journals, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)—the main granting agency for the humanities and social sciences in Canada—adopted a new policy in 2018 requiring that journals supported through its Aid to Scholarly Journals (ASJ) grant make the published version of record (VoR) for all peer-reviewed content freely accessible, either immediately upon publication or after no more than a 12-month delay (SSHRC, 2018). As is the case for most Canadian-based humanities and social sciences (HSS) journals with a broad readership, the CJPS does not comply with this recent requirement. It must therefore adjust its business model or forfeit...