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"We can complain all we want about the 'big 5', but it is our own actions that keep us locked in..."
The Open Access (OA) movement did manage to break down paywalls blocking access to academic content. However, publishers, notably the Big Five, have put up new financial barriers, demanding payment from authors to publish their work, socalled APCs. As such, the initial Open Access goals of affordability and equity has not been achieved.
While we are required to pay to have our work published, we are simultaneously bombarded by the same publishers with requests to provide peer reviews for free. By complying, we perpetuate a system that fosters global inequalities, as access to and publishing in academic journals remain unaffordable in many parts of the world.
To disrupt this cycle, we call for a global reviewers' strike. Without the peer review an academic journal has little value. It is at this point where we hold power to change the balance towards a culture of open knowledge sharing where affordable open access, diamond open access, institutional repositories and preprint servers prevail.
CALL TO ACTION
We ask you to join us in our refusal to review journal articles or book chapters published in non-open access publications, or in OA publications that charge excessive article processing fees (APCs) exceeding 1000 Euros, US Dollars, or Swiss Francs. Please return each review request with one or both of the following statements:
I am participating in R2R | Refuse to Review, the global academic review strike. Providing unpaid services to for-profit companies is not part of my job description as an academic. Therefore, I will not review content for publications that do not offer open access or that impose excessive Article Processing Charges (APCs) exceeding €1000 / $1000 / CHF1000.I kindly request that you remove my personal data from your systems in accordance with Article 17 of the EU's GDPR, which outlines my right to be forgotten.Q&A
Q: But shouldn't conducting reviews be considered as part of your job as an academic?
A: There is nothing wrong with reviewing a paper or a research proposal. But as researchers employed at public institutes, we are not tasked with providing free services to listed companies that make hundreds of millions of euros at the expense of our own research budgets.
Q: Should reviewers then be paid instead?
A: If publishers would accept lower profits, yes that might work. But it is much more likely that the publishers trickle down these additional costs and increase the APCs in response.
Q: If we no longer review paywalled or high APC journals, less articles get published. That could hurt my career, I need to publish in high impact journals.
A: There is a growing understanding that we need to move away from journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, and look at research impact in a much broader sense. Read the DORA declaration.