Open Access Principles

mediastudies.press is committed to open access in scholarly publishing. This means, first, that all of our published works are available for free on the open web. But our commitment goes deeper than public access alone. We believe that ownership and governance matter too—that sustainable OA publishing should be nonprofit and scholar-led. And we are committed to the principle that authorship should be free too. The “article processing charges” (APCs) that many OA publishers charge risk shifting the barriers of access from reader to author, especially in the media studies fields. Our serials and singles are free to authors and readers alike.

The following tenets are adapted from Jean-Sébastien Caux‘s Genuine Open Access Principles. (Caux’s principles are, in turn, adapted from the Fair Open Access Alliance’s Fair Open Access Principles.)

1. Community ownership - mediastudies.press has a transparent ownership structure, and is controlled by and responsive to the scholarly community
2. Open infrastructure - The infrastructure for operating mediastudies.press belongs to, and is open sourced to the community. The entire technological stack and all operating protocols are documented and made easily transferable between community owners
3. Copyright to authors - Authors of mediastudies.press works retain copyright. The publisher assists authors in protecting their rights in case of infringement
4. Open access - All mediastudies.press works are published open access and an explicit open access license is used, which defaults to Creative Commons BY-NC
5. Open citations - mediastudies.press is committed to making its citation metadata openly accessible by actively participating in the Initiative for Open Citations
6. Fee free - Submission, peer evaluation and publication are not conditional in any way on the payment of a fee from authors or their employing institution, or on membership of an institution or society
7. Non-profit - mediastudies.press’s operations are entirely non-profit
8. Open finances - mediastudies.press’s finances are openly published and available for public scrutiny
9. Academic editing - The editorial processes of mediastudies.press are run by the community, and all editorial decisions are taken by active professional academics, using exclusively scholarship-based criteria