Linguistic Open Access Series kick-off with Johan Rooryck

ZAS as institution seeks to contribute to increase the share and quality of non-profit open access (such as Diamond open access) publishing in linguistics. Publishing initiatives, linguistics students and researchers who share the following interests are invited to attend our new lecture series:

- attract researchers to non-commercial open access publishing

- network with non-profit initiatives in linguistics

- recruit linguists to volunteer for open access initiatives

- share information about funding opportunities for open access

As kick-off on May 7th, 2025 at 14:00 Professor Johan Rooryck will present a keynote lecture on current challenges and opportunities in open access publishing. Johan Rooryck is the executive director of cOAlition S and editor in chief of Glossa, as well as a well-known linguist. The talk will take place in a hybrid format at the ZAS facilities at Eberhard-Lämmert-Saal, Meierottostr. 8, 10719 Berlin and online.

Title: Towards equitable and inclusive Open Access in linguistics

Abstract: Open Access (OA) publishing is often associated with author-facing Article Processing Charges (APCs) and costly Transformative Agreements between commercial publishers and library consortia that allow authors from participating library consortia to both read and publish in the publishers’ journals. This publishing model is exclusive and inequitable: it limits participation in the scholarly debate to authors and institutions that have the means to meet these high costs. Since the 2021 UNESCO recommendation on Open Science, there has been increasing support for the idea that Open Access should be inclusive and equitable: authors and readers should not be faced with financial barriers to participate in the scholarly debate. Alternative publishing models such as Diamond Open Access and Subscribe to Open have been developed to meet that challenge. I will discuss how the Diamond OA ecosystem is currently being organized on the national, regional, and global levels to achieve inclusive and equitable Open Access publishing.

More in particular, I will focus on how this is being done in linguistics via Diamond OA journals that are scholar-owned and run, including Glossa and Isogloss among 47 other journals that have come together in the foundation Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA) www.lingoa.eu. I will discuss the challenges and opportunities of running Diamond OA linguistics journals in terms of their governance, guidelines, and sustainability.

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