About SciPost

At SciPost, we believe that the only realistic way to reform publishing is to build new infrastructure implementing things as academics, not corporations, want them. In this day and high-tech age, communities equipped with purpose-built systems and workflows are entirely able to independently take care of all their publishing needs. Our purpose is to empower such communities.

We implement this through a triad of pillars, each providing a different level of support:

• In-house Journals

  The first pillar consists of field-scoped journals implementing SciPost's open editorial procedure and run by Editorial Colleges of reputed specialists. Building up on our template in Physics, our vision is to extend our Genuine Open Access services to many other fields (with a portfolio of field-scoped Journals) and install a multi-field overarching journal called Selections highlighting the very best science from all fields and targeted towards a much broader readership (from non-specialists to journalists/press agencies all the way to the general public).

• Hosted Journals

  The second pillar complements the field-scoped in-house journals by providing more specialized field/specialty-targeted publishing venues run by independent Editorial Colleges. These journals make full use of SciPost's editorial, publishing, production and maintenance systems, and are fully embedded into (and thus supported by) SciPost's business model. An example of Hosted Journal is Migration Politics. Our vision is to upscale use of these facilities by supporting the creation and maintenance of a large portfolio of community-run but SciPost-hosted specialized journals (and thus naturally complementing the field-scope in-house journals of the first pillar).

• Affiliate Journals

  The third pillar empowers independently-run Diamond-class journals to make use of our financial information system for organizations linking publishing activities (via authors and their affiliations) with institutional support, enabling complete transparency in expenditures and returns on investment using our business model's PubFracs concept. Our vision is to upscale use of these facilities by onboarding a large family of existing Diamond journals, and by extension to effectively form a strong federation able to act synergetically as lobbying group for Diamond sustainability.

Open Access has led to the burgeoning of a plethora of different business models, all too often characterized by inflated costs, inequity and lack of financial transparency. Few knowledgeable people doubt that researchers and academic institutions are currently being fleeced by publishers. The only way to stop this is to provide an alternative.

We propose a business model which is cost-slashing, equitable, and completely transparent. You will find a detailed explanation at our business model page, but the idea is rather simple to understand.

• Publishing and interlinking
  Organizations (author affiliations, funding agencies, ...) are interlinked with each Publication to which they are associated.
• Determining PubFracs
  Upon publication, we compute our PubFracs (a fraction of a unit representing an Organization's "affiliations weight" for a given Publication).
• Compiling operational costs
  On a yearly basis, we determine and make publicly known: our total expenditures, and an average expenditure per publication (APEX)
• Information display
  We publicly display relevant information on expenditures and support received:
  • subsidies we have received
  • organizations listing and country-level summaries
  • an assessment of our current state of viability
• Sustaining
  We liaise with Organizations benefitting from our activities, who can inspect all the data and independently determine to which level they choose to support our activities. Generosity is appreciated, bearing in mind the proportion of non-supporting bystanders. We scale up, maintain or wind down our operations depending on how much support we can gather.

See full details at our business model page