Publication
"Towards Responsible Publishing": Findings from a global stakeholder consultation
Final report and executive summary for the TRP consultation.
What is it about?
This project presents the findings of a global multi-stakeholder consultation conducted between November 2023 and May 2024 on behalf of cOAlition S. The consultation was led by a partnership between Research Consulting and Leiden University's Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), with input and advice from Stephen Pinfield (University of Sheffield Information School), Joy Owango (Founding Director, Training Centre in Communication) and Lin Zhang (Professor of Information Management, Wuhan University).
The consultation aimed to assess the research community's appetite for the transformative changes to the scholarly communication system proposed in cOAlition S' "Towards Responsible Publishing" (TRP) initiative. The key objectives of this work were to understand how the TRP proposal could be modified to better resonate with stakeholders, identify potential barriers and unintended consequences and determine whether the existing infrastructure can support cOAlition S' vision of a community-driven publishing ecosystem.
Based on the findings from this consultation, it was concluded that there is support for some of the principles and practices encouraged in the TRP proposal. This highlights opportunities for cOAlition S to make progress in their desired direction of travel, building on select parts of the proposal.
Why is it important?
Please note that the below is an excerpt from the final report's Foreword:
"Research funders have the responsibility to make sure that their funding is used in ways that improve the scholarly publishing landscape for the benefit of the research community and society. The Towards Responsible Publishing proposal is therefore a logical next step for cOAlition S funders to help make the publishing system fit for the 21st century. It builds on Plan S and goes further in proposing a way to disseminate research that is not only more open, but also more trusted, equitable, efficient, and sustainable.
But, of course, funders cannot do it alone. For any changes to take hold, we need support from the scholarly community. This report presents the findings of that consultation: it shows an insightful picture of researchers’ attitudes towards innovative research practices, such as open access publishing, preprint posting, open peer review and the incentives needed to embrace these behaviours. cOAlition S will carefully examine these findings and prepare a way forward that our funders could adopt to support these practices.
We believe the report is also relevant beyond cOAlition S and will hopefully inspire other actors to do their part to create a better scholarly communication system. We therefore invite all organisations - institutions, funders, libraries, governments - to explore the rich insights of the report and to define how they can best support such a system.
We thank the teams at Research Consulting and CWTS for carrying out this important work and are particularly grateful to the 11,600 researchers who shared their voices during the consultation. We count on the research community to help us take forward our shared vision for a better and more responsible scholarly communication ecosystem."
Johan Rooryck, Executive Director, cOAlition S Bodo Stern, Chief of Strategic Initiatives, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Chair of the TRP Steering Group, cOAlition S
