Community-first publishing: 2022 Year in Review

One word that sums up this year for Canadian Science Publishing is community. From partnerships with scientific societies to joining multi-sector collaborations, 2022 was marked by taking action to support communities who produce and use the varied outputs of scientific research.

Changing how we publish for a more sustainable future

As Canada’s largest publisher of environmental science journals, we recognize the need to practice what we publish: sustainable ways to interact with the environment.

We started the year off by joining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Publishers Compact. To initiate our commitment to developing sustainable practices and to act as champions of the SDGs during the Decade of Action (2020-2030), we made the decision to stop print production of our journals to reduce our organization’s carbon footprint.

We also launched freely accessible collections of papers on several SDGs: Climate Action (SDG #13), conserving and managing Life Under Water (SDG #14) and Life on Land (SDG #15).

In support of the Climate Action SDG, we joined the Kudos Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative and created a collection of freely accessible plain language summaries of climate science published in our journals.

Partnering with research communities in Canada

Whether bacterial, botanical, or benthic we publish a journal whose community expands what we know about these segments of nature.

We were thrilled to become official partners with the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) and the newly formed Society of Canadian Aquatic Sciences (SCAS). We can’t wait to kickstart these partnerships in 2023 with online and in-person events for society members.

Five years of partnership with the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) was recognized with a collection of more than 80 papers and COVID-19 policy briefings published by RSC members in FACETS, the official journal of the RSC Academy of Science. We also extended congratulations to several of our editorial board members who were inducted into the RSC this year: Drs. Steven Cooke, Sapna Sharma, Baiyu Helen Zhang, Ian Moore, and Trevor Lantz.

Launching training programs for early-career researchers

Early-career researchers (ECRs) are change agents for science and its publication. This year we are honoured to welcome and work alongside the inaugural members of the early-career editorial boards for Arctic Science and the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. ECR members will learn about and contribute to peer review, content curation, journal promotion, and strategic development.

Also made available in the open access journal FACETS was Resources for Early Career Researchers, a collection of perspectives on philosophical and practical aspects of research, academia, and science publishing—with an open invitation for new submissions!

Helping build a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive (EDI) culture in science publishing

In line with our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion, this year we renamed one of our journals to Drone Systems and Applications to remove the former title’s use of the gender-exclusive term “unmanned”. As the journal’s editorial leadership shared in an editorial they wrote: “…inclusive language [is] a foundation for diverse and inclusive societies and workplaces.”

With more and more content published on community-engaged research (CER)—researchers and community partners working together to advance community goals and science—we created new guidelines for reporting CER. The guidelines, accompanying collection of papers, and blog series outline best practices for reporting CER, including inclusive authorship practices.

We curated Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Science, a collection of open access papers that identify barriers, give voice to the experience of researchers, and demonstrate how a more diverse and inclusive landscape can lead to better science.

Also created to support EDI were guidelines for non-academic peer reviewers and guidelines for more-than-human authorship.

Supporting data transparency

Extending our support of the FAIR Data Principles, we updated our publishing policy on data sharing: authors are now required to provide a data availability statement that declares the location of the primary research data that support the findings of a study and the conditions under which those data can be accessed.

Paired with this new policy are blog posts on data-related topics, including using open data and peer reviewing data papers.

Taking collective action for open access publishing

Throughout 2022, open sharing of knowledge motivated the work we do as scholarly publishers. This motivation will only deepen in the years to come.

We expanded our portfolio of open access journals this year; Drone Systems and Applications became gold open access, joining Arctic Science and FACETS.

We joined two initiatives that bring publishers together to maximize open research efforts: The Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA) and Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA). Membership in the OASPA will help Canadian Science Publishing expand our global network of open access partners, engage with other publishers that are committed to open access, and strengthen our advocacy for freely accessible scholarly communications.

During Open Access Week, we launched a free glossary of open access publishing terms and definitions.

Finally, Michael Donaldson, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Canadian Science Publishing, moderated* a panel at the 2022 Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) that brought together diverse sectors and stakeholders to discuss the sustainability of open access publishing in Canada. The panelists included Clare Appavoo (Executive Director at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network), Sapna Mahajan (Director of Genomics in Society at Genome Canada), Stefanie Haustein (Associate Professor and co-director of the ScholCommLab, University of Ottawa), Adrian Stanley (General Manager of JMIR Publications).

The panel focused on the challenge of transitioning to a sustainable open access future and identified a number of opportunities for advancement, calling for greater collaboration among stakeholders as well as the need for top-down policy changes to effect action. Stay tuned for the CSPC conference proceedings which will be available soon.

As part of CSP’s commitment to open access, we successfully applied for Transformative Journal status through Plan S for 12 of our journals. Plan S defines a transformative journal as a subscription/hybrid journal that is committed to transitioning to a fully open access journal; the journal must gradually increase the share of open access content and offset subscription income from payments for publishing services to avoid double payments (e.g., see Canadian Science Publishing’s Fair Pricing policy).

This commitment is a key step in our transition to open access. It also provides authors whose work is funded by Plan S to have another route for compliance with their open access policies. Plan S funders, such as Fonds de Recherche du Québec, may choose to provide financial support to authors who publish open access until December 31, 2024.

We end the year grateful for new and established relationships with science-engaged communities and excited for the big changes 2023 is sure to bring. Stay tuned!

*Moderator David Castle (Professor, School of Public Administration and the Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria; Researcher in Residence, Office of the Chief Science Advisor) was unable to attend the 2022 Canadian Science Policy Conference; Michael Donaldson served as moderator.

Photo: Community-Engaged Research Collection | Caption: Tikiranajuk camp participants, instructors, support staff, and family members congregating at the dock to prepare for camp departure in August 2012 | Photographer: Gita Ljubicic | Learn more