Are the publishing models used by conservation journal ethical? http://www.conservationandsociety.org/downloadpdf.asp?id=288028;type=2">https://www.conservationandsociety.org/downloadp... A crack team of colleagues and myself looked at 426 journals to find out - [Thread]

Why does this matter? Because unfair publishing models exclude those from outside wealthy Universities from accessing or contributing to the literature & move the control of publishing and research ownership from conservationists to commercial publishers. This deepens inequity.

We used the Fair Open Access criteria to evaluate whether a journal had a ethical publishing model. Details of the five criteria can be found here https://www.fairopenaccess.org/the-fair-open-access-principles/">https://www.fairopenaccess.org/the-fair-...

What did we find? Two-thirds of journals, together publishing nearly half of all articles, complied with only two or fewer FOA principles. Only twenty journals (5%), publishing 485 articles per year (<1%), complied with all five principles. But there is more.

We found that Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Springer represented 48% of all journals, but 80% of the 25 journals with the highest impact factor (included as an indicator of PERCEIVED prestige). This raises concerns around a potential monopoly effect.

Lastly, we also uncovered a weak negative correlation between journal impact factor and number of FOA principles fulfilled. This suggests authors concerned about IP will be pushed towards journals with less ethical publishing models.

BUT, also some GOOD news! We created an online database where you can look up journals and check how ethical their publishing model is https://cor-p.shinyapps.io/EP_database/ 

We">https://cor-p.shinyapps.io/EP_databa... hope this can help authors choose more ethically and move the system in the right direction one submission at a time