CfP: Publishing Cultures in Transition: Open Access, Critical Digital Literacy, and Digital Infrastructures

Edited by Klaus Rummler¹ , Natalie Marty² , and Urooj Nizami³

¹ Zürich University of Teacher Education, Switzerland

² Swiss Medical Weekly – SMW, Switzerland

³ Simon Fraser University, Public Knowledge Project – PKP, Canada

Please submit your full paper until 14 November 2025 at https://www.medienpaed.com/about/submissions. Please also find the author guidelines there.

Call for Papers as PDF (English)

Theme

In recent years, scholar-led Open Access (OA) journals have emerged as powerful catalysts for reimagining the practices and politics of academic publishing. These journals, especially those who are following the Diamond Open Access model and are grounded in the principle that neither readers nor authors bear publication costs, are more than alternative distribution channels – they are the outcome of critical engagement with exclusionary and commercialized models of scholarly communication.

The Example of Open Journal Systems (OJS by PKP)

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is best known for developing Open Journal Systems (OJS) – the world’s most widely used journal management and publishing platform. OJS supports over 55.000 active journals in 161 countries, operating in 60 languages – well over half of all scientific journals, issues and papers, worldwide. Between 2020 and 2024 alone, nearly 9 million articles have been published using OJS. These numbers not only reflect broad adoption but also affirm OJS’s role in supporting bibliodiversity, multilingualism, and the global dissemination of research, especially from and about the Global South.

OJS and the broader PKP ecosystem have been described as an archipelago (Nizami 2024): a distributed yet interconnected constellation of journals, institutions, and communities. Each of those publishing initiatives represents a distinct island – locally grounded, self-governed, and responsive to their context – while sharing common infrastructures, values, and dedicated to a commitment to Open Access as a Global Public Good, affirming both sovereignty and solidarity, thus enabling local relevance alongside global collaboration.

Édouard Glissant, the Martinican writer and philosopher, writes powerfully of «archipelagic thinking» (la pensée archipélagique) as a means of using situated practices to connect distinctive contexts. Quoting Glissant from Caribbean Discourse, the scholar An Yountae writes,

«For Glissant, the archipelagic imagination views ‹each island [as] embod[ying] openness. The dialectic between inside and outside is reflected in the relationship of land and sea.› He abolishes the very notion of the universal and the particular, or centre and periphery.» (Yountae 2024, 149; quoting Glissant 1989, 139).

While OJS has witnessed widespread global adoption, scholarly engagement with the socio-cultural dimensions of the sea-change toward open platforms in scholarly publishing has yet to be critically explored. Rather than viewing islands as isolated, exotic, or insular, we draw on archipelagic thinking to advocate for a relational approach that integrates localized currents and global horizons. PKP’s mission and vision reflects archipelagic thinking in two key ways: (1) OJS fosters autonomy from dominant, centralized publishing systems, offering a model of distributed sovereignty through free and open source software; and (2) these tools support an ecosystem of bibliodiversity, rejecting a model of extraction from the Global South and setting a new paradigm of exchange and collaboration.

We invite contributions that critically examine and celebrate the cultures and practices of scholar-led (Diamond) Open Access publishing as sites of digital literacy, democratization, and knowledge politics. We are particularly interested in works that address the following interrelated themes:

1. Critical Engagement with Scholarly Publishing Norms: (Diamond) Open Access journals frequently arise from critical positions towards the commodification and gatekeeping characteristic of traditional academic publishing. We encourage papers that analyse how self-organized, non-profit, and scholar-led journals enact critical agency – both questioning and actively transforming the power structures underpinning knowledge dissemination.

2. Democratization and Equity in Knowledge Production: This Call for Papers recognizes Diamond Open Access as a practical means of democratizing access to knowledge (c.f. Willinsky 2002), eliminating financial barriers for both authors and readers. We seek research, reflections, and case studies that document how Diamond Open Access practices foster greater inclusivity, equity, and diversity – amplifying voices, languages, and perspectives often marginalised by mainstream venues.

3. Governance, Infrastructures, and Critical (Digital) Literacy: At the intersection with media education, scholar-led publishing offers a unique laboratory for critical digital literacy (c.f. Kellner 2021). We welcome explorations of how participating in the governance and production of Open Access journals cultivates new competencies for critically engaging not just with texts, but with the infrastructures and politics of academic communication. How do Diamond Open Access journals serve as instances of moving from passive content consumption to active, ethical, and critical media production?

4. The Politics and Sustainability of Open Scholarship: Submissions may also address political and structural questions: What policy, funding, and governance models enable the sustainability of Diamond Open Access? How do these journals challenge prestige economies and power imbalances (institutional, geographic, or linguistic) in scholarly publishing? What are the key obstacles, and how are they being negotiated?

5. Infrastructures and Ecologies of Scholar-Led Publishing: OJS & PKP in Practice: We encourage concise reports and reflections on how OJS and PKP enable diverse, scholar-led publishing models in different disciplines and regions. We welcome insights into the everyday realities and evolving ecologies of scholar-led publishing with OJS and PKP.

• How do local cultures and academic communities shape, adapt, and govern their use of these open infrastructures?
• What new opportunities or challenges arise for decolonial practice, language equity, and non-commercial models?
• Share case studies, practical experiences, or critical perspectives on platform implementation, governance, and innovation.
• While there are no expectations that submissions engage with particular theorists, we particularly welcome grounded theory building and/or submissions that focus on relational, archipelagic thinking, through OJS use.

Contributions

By highlighting these themes, this special issue aims to advance collective theorizing and practical strategies for transforming the culture, ethics, and politics of academic publishing. We invite critical, theoretical, empirical, and practice-based manuscripts that illuminate the ways in which especially Diamond Open Access journals operate as critical, democratizing, and media-educational projects reshaping the public good of scholarly knowledge in the digital age.

Submission and Procedure Requirements for Full Texts

• Submissions must be original contributions or first publications (original articles).
• Submissions (i.e., full texts) must follow common structures of scholarly (research) articles.
• An abstract of 150-200 words should briefly summarise the central statements and results.
• Both, title and abstract must be in German and English and submitted together with the article.
• Five to six keywords.
• Wordcount of the full text: Up to 40.000 characters (excluding abstract and references).
• Citation style: Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. (English; author-date).
• Language: English (British English).
• Submission Format: Full text.
• The submission guidelines for authors: 
  https://www.medienpaed.com/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.

In the context of scientific transparency, we encourage all authors to make their research data (e.g., software, data sets, questionnaires used) or other additional material (e.g., posters, supplementary media) available with the submission.

Quality Assurance Strategy

• Single-Stage Review Process.
• Two double-blind peer-reviews per submission.
• Contributing authors will be enquired for reviews. Considering them as experts in the field, authors will comment and review other authors’ submissions within this call.
• Additional (external) reviewers might be involved.
• Full texts should be reviewed until end December 2025.

Submission

• Full text contributions of 40.000 characters (excl. abstracts and references). The contributions will undergo a double-blind peer-review process upon formal evaluation by the editors. Authors to this call and special issue will be included as reviewers in this process.
• Submission until 14 November 2025 via https://www.medienpaed.com/about/submissionsto the section «Publishing Cultures».
• For the production in OJS, the special issue will be organised as ‹section›. The editors of the special issue will be enrolled as ‹section editors›.

Publication Format

• Rolling publication, beginning with four accepted articles.
• Issue will conclude with an editorial that thematically frames the contributions (not necessarily in TOC order).
• Articles will receive Crossref DOIs, be indexed in DOAJ, and archived with OAPEN etc.
• The full issue will also be published as an open-access book and made available as print-on-demand.
• Publication of the special issue is planned for mid April 2026.

Editors

• Klaus Rummler , Zürich University of Teacher Education, Editor-in-chief of MedienPädagogik, Switzerland. post@medienpaed.com.
• Natalie Marty , Managing Director of Swiss Medical Weekly – SMW, President of the Association of Swiss Diamond Open Access Journals, Switzerland. natalie.marty@smw.ch.
• Urooj Nizami , Simon Fraser University, Public Knowledge Project – PKP, Associate Director for Community Engagement and Outreach, Canada. urooj_nizami@sfu.ca.

References

Glissant, Edouard. 1989. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Caraf Books. University Press of Virginia. https://monoskop.org/images/a/a5/Glissant_Edouard_Caribbean_Discourse.pdf.

Kellner, Douglas. 2021. «Digital Technologies, Multi-Literacies, and Democracy: Toward a Reconstruction of Education». In Technology and Democracy: Toward A Critical Theory of Digital Technologies, Technopolitics, and Technocapitalism, by Douglas Kellner. Medienkulturen Im Digitalen Zeitalter. Springer Fachmedien. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31790-4_10.

Nizami, Urooj. 2024. «Welcome to PKP’s Community Newsletter, Archipelago!». Public Knowledge Project, January 30. https://pkp.sfu.ca/2024/01/29/welcome-pkp-newsletter-archipelago/.

Willinsky, John. 2002. «Democracy and Education: The Missing Link May Be Ours». Harvard Educational Review 72 (3): 367–92. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.72.3.0nj018h638677r24.

Yountae, An. 2024. «5. Poetics of World-Making: Creolizing the Sacred, Becoming Archipelago». In The Coloniality of the Secular. Race, Religion, and Poetics of World-Making, by An Yountae. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027096-007.