Best practices for journals
It is increasingly seeming that in order to fix the dysfunctional journal market, new journals will need to be created. I take it as given that the Fair Open Access Principles are a requirement for such journals. There are several other "journal whitelist criteria" that are desirable, such as
- legal ownership being more precise (some Fair OA-compliant journals have no clear legal standing and could in theory be taken over by Elsevier as it gets desperate)
- accountability of editors to community: reports, election of editors, term limits, etc
- editorial practices: no ghost editors, publication decisions taken by more than one editor, etc
- peer review: double blind (or not), post-publication review allowed, open reviewing, etc
- website: mobile-friendly
As usual I list Quantum as an example of a journal that has done many things right. I would like to hear views of others on points I have missed, and the relative importance of these various criteria. Let's make a checklist with criteria listed from most basic to luxurious.
The summary of the discussion will go here: https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/blob/master/Founding%20a%20journal/Journal%20whitelist%20criteria.md
Edited by Mark C. Wilson