Continuing our “5 Questions with…” series, we take a look at Atlantic Geoscience‘s recent flip to open access. Sandra Barr, Lead Editor, describes the steps involved in the transition, the difficulties encountered and looks to the journal’s future.

Atlantic Geoscience covers all aspects of the geoscience of Atlantic Canada, the Appalachians and related regions and is the official journal of the Atlantic Geoscience Society.

As publishing scientists ourselves, those of us closely involved with the journal Atlantic Geoscience could see that scientific publishing was evolving rapidly in a disturbing direction.  For-profit publishers were requiring increasingly large publication charges and seemed to be controlling artificial publication quality assessments such as citation indices. We were concerned also by the rise in predatory journals and solicitations via the internet, and what seemed to be a move toward “pay-to-publish” models, which we strongly opposed.  We also saw that government funding agencies were moving toward the requirement that publicly funded research should be freely available, and many who publish in Atlantic Geoscience have such funding.

Hence during the Fall of 2023 as lead editor for the journal I initiated conversations with Marie-Eve Dugas at Érudit.  Marie-Eve was very helpful and patient while explaining the various publication models and giving me weblinks where I could get more information.  It seemed apparent that diamond open access was the best model for keeping the publication process in the hands of researchers. This information gave me the background that I needed to take the idea of open access forward, initially to the co-editors and production manager for the journal (January 2024), and then to the associate editors, and ultimately to the Executive and Council of the Atlantic Geoscience Society (AGS) in their annual meetings in February 2024. I cannot emphasize enough how important the role of Érudit was in the move of Atlantic Geoscience to open access.  We really knew nothing about it when I started the process.

We prepared a financial analysis and projection for the next three years (2025-2027, volumes 61-63 of the journal), which we presented to AGS Executive and Council at their April, 2024, meeting.  It formed part of our proposal to adopt diamond open access as of January 1, 2025.  The financial analysis showed that annual production costs over recent years were about the same as our subscription income.  However, we also have significant investment income because over the years since 2006 when we became an online-only journal, income exceeded publication costs and we were able to put money into guaranteed income investments (GIC).  We also had income from indirect aggregator subscriptions, as well as small donations made by a significant number of AGS members when they register for the annual meeting of the society.  We also took into account the annual Partnership for Open Access funding that Érudit would likely provide, although the amount was only approximate. Interest rates fluctuate, and the effect of open access on royalties seems unpredictable, but it was clear that the journal had sufficient investments to sustain it for the foreseeable future and would not likely become a drain on the finances of AGS itself.  Our proposal was approved, and Atlantic Geoscience was scheduled to become open access on January 1, 2025.

In the Fall of 2024, guidance from Érudit (in this case initially Marie-Eve Dugas and then Chloë Marshall) helped us to understand the intricacies of Creative Commons Licencing.  Again, the choice of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) seemed the best – after all, the reason why we put so much volunteer effort into publishing the journal is to disseminate information so that it can be used by others.  We saw no reason to restrict its use as long as the source is properly recognized and cited.  Chloë Marshall also provided advice and guidance about cleaning up the Atlantic Geoscience website and its space on Érudit to ensure that they are consistent with one another and to make it clear that copyright lies with the authors of the papers unless other arrangements are requested (e.g., for federal government employees).

We added wording to the website to make the publication conditions clear, with the opportunity for individual authors to seek alternative arrangements as required. Throughout the transition process, we had excellent support from the staff at the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the University of New Brunswick, especially James Kerr and Tammy Nichol, who helped us put the necessary information in the most appropriate places on the website.  No doubt some tweaking is still required but we have experienced no problems so far.

We have some challenges this year (2025) while the last few articles in the 2024 volume are still behind the one-year subscription-access-only moving wall.  Some are not yet open access on the OJS website site but are open access on the Érudit site because Érudit is not able to accommodate a partial open access.  This problem will resolve itself by the end of 2025, after which Atlantic Geoscience will be truly open access.

Atlantic Geoscience is unique in that it is a small regional journal that has been published continuously since 1965, mainly by volunteers. It existed 10 years before the Atlantic Geoscience Society itself and was adopted as the Society journal in 1986.  The journal’s name has changed several times over the decades as geoscience itself has evolved (you can read the full history here).  I think that the small size and culture of our journal and its parent society made this transition easier than it would be for a larger and more complex publishing system with a number of paid employees, for example. So our journal’s context actually made the process easier.

It is still early days, but we think that this move to open access ensures that our small regional journal is more visible and accessible worldwide.  We had already anticipated and begun this transition back in 2017 when we made all volumes of the journal except the last three open access.  In 2021, we changed this to all volumes except the current volume.  Complete open access was clearly the next step.  I wish that we had done it sooner!  And a surprise that we had this year was that a significant number of AGS members continued to make a small donation to the journal as part of their annual meeting registration in 2025.  That gesture seems very positive and supportive.

As Atlantic Geoscience is going into this transition in a fairly particular position financially, with funds in reserve, is there anything you wish to highlight which might also speak to those with varying degrees of financial constraint?

In all honesty, I think that it is the right move for all not-for-profit publishers.  I believe that all research should be available to those who want to access it, not just those who can afford to pay to access it.  And researchers who typically work many hours beyond their required and paid work hours to apply for funding to do research (or other creative activities) should not have to pay to publish and disseminate their work.  And especially, for-profit companies should not be manipulating the world of research, innovation, and creativity.

We realize that we are fortunate to have this financial cushion.  It resulted from a number of decisions that the editors made over the years but most significant was the move to online-only publication in 2006, one of the first journals to do so. Had we continued to print and mail the journal, we would not have had financial viability. We handled complaints by having an option for subscribers to choose to pay the additional full cost of printing and mailing the journal on an annual basis.  Gradually the number of such subscribers (mainly libraries) dwindled to only three or four by the time we discontinued the option this year with the move to open access.

However, even without the financial cushion, we can see the advantages of open access publishing.  Managing subscriptions was always the biggest headache and time sink in publishing this journal.  With open access, all those time-consuming problems are gone.

We are much more concerned about these aspects of the future than we are about the finances!  We are fortunate that the Atlantic Geoscience Society has a strong culture of engagement and volunteerism that has been passed along to younger members over the years.  We try to encourage involvement with the journal as “guest editors” of special series of papers on particular topics, typically arising from sessions or symposia at the annual meeting.  But the pool is small – AGS has fewer than 300 members and about one-third are current students, many of whom will not stay in Atlantic Canada.  University faculty here have a long history of publishing with their students in Atlantic Geoscience – as long as that continues, the journal should be sustainable.