Introduction

In 2022, KE’s task and finish (T&F) group on alternative publishing platforms (APPs) embarked on a project to create awareness about APPs among the research community and research-supporting institutions. It aims to provide a clearer picture of what APPs look like in terms of functions, similarities, and differences. In a first step, the T&F published a scoping paper. Subsequently, we circulated a “call for entries” - an open call to all platforms working in open access, publishing, and communication, who wish to be included in a KE taxonomy of Alternative Publishing Platforms. Based on the answers to this call, the T&F group created an “Analysis Report on Alternative Publishing Platforms” which was published in September 2023. The main outcomes of this analysis were:

• Most of the alternative platforms in this pilot survey were institution-based and driven by academic or similar communities.

• From our sample, no pattern emerged of any discipline appearing to be more innovative than any others, and indeed most alternative platforms seemed to be open to use by all fields.

• Most platforms within this survey were replacing the function of existing publishers in publishing research articles, books and conference proceedings. There was some innovation around peer review, with some platforms set up solely to host or organise peer review. Considering both of these aspects, only a small group of fewer than 10 of the 45 platforms should probably be described as truly exploring ‘alternative ways of doing things'.

• Only 11 of the platforms said that they solely concentrated on the methodological quality of the work, 2 solely on the impact of the work. Most said it was up to the editors to decide on criteria for assessment - the platforms themselves were agnostic. This is an area where further work might help elucidate the philosophies of different platforms when it comes to research assessment.

• Most of the platforms rely on an open source software (33 vs 14 using a proprietary software) and a majority of them also provide open APIs (26) and/or interoperability with other services (35).

• Regarding legal aspects, all platforms offer the possibility to use Creative Commons licences for the distributed material and allow authors to retain copyright.

In its next activity, the T&F group aims to initiate further research on the topic of APPs by commissioning an in-depth analysis. Thereby, we want to discover means to support innovation in scholarly communication, which could be achieved through functionalities APPs provide, and get more insights about the maturity and development of alternative platforms. As outlined in our first scoping paper and confirmed in our analysis report, alternative approaches are diverse. We want to provide guidance for publishing platforms, research organizations and funders about the current landscape of APPs. In the following, we outline the envisaged outcomes and research questions.

Desired outcomes

Building on the report published last year, the T&F APPs activity is looking to generate recommendations on how to practice alternative ways of scholarly publishing for those stakeholders who wish to support or adopt them. Thereby, different stakeholders are to be addressed:

• Research funding organizations (RFO) / funding bodies: How can we recognise or support alternative publishing in our funding schemes?

  • Lessons learned and recommendations on how research funding organizations could implement assistance for alternative publishing routes and/or support for alternative publishing infrastructure into their funding schemes.

    • A demonstration of various possible support schemes (from mentioning the use of APPs, via encouraging the use of APPs for particular aspects of grant compliance, to direct financial support or provision of their own infrastructure) could be helpful. Could include case studies (e.g. use of F1000 to provide platforms by Wellcome Trust or EU; change of Open Access funding policy by Gates Foundation to support APPs instead of journals)

• Publishing platforms - How can my publishing platform become more progressive (e.g. in terms of innovative features existing APPs implemented)?

  • Lessons learned and recommendations for publishers or publishing platforms who would like to move from traditional forms of publishing to more progressive and innovative ways as identified in the APP report.

    • In these recommendations also the perspective of researchers needs to be considered.

• Research performing and research-supporting institutions (RPO) - How can my institution support progress in scholarly communication?

  • Lessons learned and recommendations on how research institutions (universities, institutes, learned societies etc.) and other research supporting institutions (libraries, IT centres etc.) can effectively support/facilitate alternative publishing platforms.

    • Again, the full range of possible support (from “not discourage the use of APPs”, via ensuring APP-publishing activities of researchers are a part of hiring and promotion criteria, to direct financial support or provision of their own infrastructure) ideally should be included to enhance the practical usefulness of the recommendations. The OSF cultural change pyramid (cf. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.545) could possibly act as a framework for this.

Research questions

In order to reach the envisaged outcomes, the T&F APPs activity plans to carry out a study asking the following questions. Thereby, different stakeholders should be included:

• Funders1

  • How is publication funding organized, and which role do APPs and/or alternative publishing approaches play in this context?

    • Regarding financial support for individual publications resulting from funded projects: Which type of publications, formats etc. are eligible for funding? To what extent is funding available for publications employing alternative approaches as identified by the APP report (continuous or living documents; open and/or post publication peer review approaches; formats like datasets, code etc.)?

    • In what way do funders apply strategic approaches to shape and/or to change the scholarly publishing landscape as a whole? Which aspects of scholarly publishing are emphasized here, and how does this fit into the framework outlined by the APP report? How are researchers being involved in the development of those strategies?

  • Regarding funding requirements:

    • Which types and formats of publications are accepted to communicate project results?

    • If alternative publishing approaches or certain elements of APPs aren’t accepted, why?

    • In case publications resulting from funded projects are being monitored by the respective funding organization: To what extent have alternative publishing routes been used by researchers in recent years? And which aspects of the APP taxonomy are most prominent?

    • Is publication encouraged at points of the research lifecycle other than the end? For example, public pre-registration (publication of method before data collection), publication of rationale/hypotheses at the point of grant application? Why/why not?

    • Are there already partnerships etc. with alternative publishing platforms or the like?

• Publishing platforms:

  • What problems do APPs overtly set out to solve?

    • E.g. Different paths to solve same problem vs. different problems addressed

  • Which are the pressing needs APPs are trying to tackle?

    • Is this being mirrored by researchers’ preferences and their assessment of the situation?

  • What are the advantages of alternative publishing, compared to more traditional approaches?

    • Which dimensions and features of alternativeness (as identified in the APP report) are particularly beneficial, and why?

  • What issues and challenges do APPs face?

    • How are they related to the different (epistemic, social, organizational, economic, financial etc.) aspects of science communication and the research system in general? This research question could be usefully informed by the framework developed in the 2017 KE report “Knowledge Exchange approach to Open Scholarship”. In particular, the issues and challenges could be plotted against the granularity framework described in the report.

  • Are there “back leaps” from alternative publishing platforms to more traditional ways of publishing, and what are the reasons for those back leaps?

• Researchers2:

  • Which factors influence researchers’ usage or non-usage of APPs?

    • Does usage of APPs depend on factors like career stage, discipline, country, gender, specialism, academic (yes/no), etc.?

  • What are the motivations of researchers using alternative publishing platforms?

    • Do expectations/pressure from research assessment, funders, peers influence the decision for or against the usage of APPS?

    • Which advantages are expected by researchers (more engagement, citations etc.; higher connectivity; faster publishing)?

  • Which features of APPs are particularly valued by researchers?

    • To what degree are APPs known and valued in general?

Relation of research questions and outcomes

The table below proposes a characterization of the links between research questions and the three desired outcomes.

Remarks on methodological aspects

The methodology should be determined in coordination with the consultant actually conducting the study. However, we would like to raise some thoughts which may be worth considering. As mentioned in the introduction, further research should be closely connected to our report (https://knowledge-exchange.pubpub.org/pub/d9h2tp1x/release/1). Especially those APPs considered as truly alternative should be approached. It also should be decided at an early stage whether a focus on specific disciplines or, alternatively, a selection of a few different disciplines would make sense or not. In addition to the report, there are several information sources around which could help to address the research questions:

• Octopus

  • Report: https://www.octopus.ac/research-culture-report incl. liiterature review:

  • Publication on Octopus: https://www.octopus.ac/publications/axc8-vs07/versions/latest

• Plan S

  • https://www.coalition-s.org/towards-responsible-publishing/

  • Summary and final report: https://zenodo.org/records/11243942

• Ithaka:

  • https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-second-digital-transformation-of-scholarly-publishing/

• Case studies

  • e.g. The German APP “Verfassungsblog” - or started to publish its content also as journal: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10036502

In addition to existing literature/studies also data sources as usage statistics of APPs like ORE3, Octopus4, PCI5, and data from open bibliometric databases as OpenAlex6, OpenAIRE7, and Lens could be valuable to the study.

This quantitative approach for selected APPs or groups of APPs could come in support of the research questions and explore the following topics8:

• coverage in bibliographic databases

• characterization of authorship by discipline, country, gender and (through further research on authors) career stage.

• characterization of usage (citations and altmetrics, including source of citations (e.g. in traditional journals vs. in publications in other APPs), discipline and countries (diversity of citations)