Changing tides

People have been working for years to build up open access publishing. Latin America is a global leader. Governments, foundations, and public universities in Latin America have fostered a vibrant culture of open access, with between fifty and ninety percent of articles published in the region appearing open access through platforms such as SciELO [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] and Redalyc, typically as diamond open access.

Plan S is an initiative launched by Coalition S, a group of international research agencies and funders from around the world. The goal is to make all publicly funded research freely available to everyone. Under Plan S, researchers who receive funding from Coalition S members must publish their work in open access journals or platforms.

More recently, academics have started developing independent journals, bypassing for-profit publishers. For example, the editorial team from the journal Lingua broke off from Elsevier and launched a new journal called Glossa.

When publishing your research, one consideration of where to publish can be the values of the journal, and whether you want to contribute to further profits for a for-profit publisher or not. The next few sections explore some of your options.