Led by the executive editor of the journal, Johan Rooryck, the editors of Lingua, which means “tongue, language” in Latin and Italian, are setting up their own, fully open-access journal. The new journal, in a rather fantastic case of academic pugilism, is called Glossa, which means “tongue, language” in ancient and modern Greek.
Rooryck said he doesn’t expect to earn anything from Glossa, which he hopes to launch early next year, and told Inside Higher Ed: “I’m doing this for purely idealistic reasons.” He said that some of his colleagues are talking to editors on other journals, who may follow the example of Lingua, and launch their own open access replacements in preference to working on traditional journals that are increasingly unaffordable even for well-financed libraries.
The open access movement formally began about 15 years ago. Since then, there have been increasing calls from academics and universities to adopt its business model for publishing research results. One reason is that most such work is funded by the taxpayer, so it is unfair to expect people to pay again to read the results of the research when it is published in traditional journals.
The other reason is straight up price-gouging: science publishers have pushed up journal prices to such an extent that many libraries struggle to provide the titles their researchers need. Because of its size and fat profit margins, Elsevier has emerged as a frequent target for open access supporters. In 2012, a site called “The Cost of Knowledge” was set up to encourage academics to boycott Elsevier. Since then, over 15,000 researchers have pledged not to work with the company “unless they radically change how they operate.”