Challenges for scholarly publishing in the digital age

Nowadays, scientific and technological dissemination is not an easy endeavor. This current scenario of scientific knowledge had never been propagated before, opening the path to new challenges. With the arrival of the Internet, editorial management has been forced to implement new strategies to enter the so-called “digital revolution.” Likewise, the dissemination of knowledge within the digital age has radically changed, which implies a paradigm shift in scientific production at all levels. Just as the publishing industry adapts to changes, journals are under pressure to enter digital convergence. Otherwise, they risk becoming marginalized, as researchers around the world want to publish their findings in journals that have the best impact factor indices.

The benefits are countless, as it has been possible to create indices that measure the number of citations of articles, authors, journals, institutions, or countries. Previous practices included printing a high number of copies of a scientific journal; this way, its circulation and consumption were limited. Today, a single issue can have thousands of downloads in a single repository or information database, whether commercial, restricted, or open access repositories ¹.

To achieve more citation impact in the international arena, it is necessary to capture the attention of the global audience, which in turn demands publishing topics of high international acceptability due to their geopolitical diversity and multilingual expression. However, for all these conditions and efforts, there is a prior and essential criterion, such as the presence and visibility of the journal before the international scientific community, based on electronic formats (XML, PDF) and not necessarily printed formats ². These digital formats must also be displayed and managed on standardized platforms worldwide, such as Open Journal Systems (OJS), a free software solution developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) in Canada.

Currently, journals, like any other scientific communication, can be in printed format or edition, electronic (when they do not have a paper equivalent, for example, a replica of the printed edition) or in both formats. Electronic journals are periodical publications that, like printed journals, disseminate original and unpublished information from peer-reviewed science ³ through electronic elements. They have minimal costs, rapid dissemination and significant reliability, thanks to their interoperability or ability to exchange, use, and retrieve information, to be distributed through servers and to be included from search engines and specialized databases to the recommended social networks to increase the visibility of journals. This dissemination of content is reinforced with the open access movement (Open Access), which allows readers from all countries to locate information based on multiple criteria (chronological, idiomatic, thematic, and typological) combined with logical procedures or operators, such as booleans or search equations to relate themes (intersection, exclusion, or alternative document operators).

Electronic journals digitize and offer full-text content, which allows, using links and the development of nodes or points of intersection, its connection with an infinite amount of content (by association or reference) demanded by readers, researchers, or users, all in favor of intertextuality. Thus, the contents of the journals are presented and disseminated from and to any place, without borders, without a paper version. They can make content and formats (text, images, and sound) more flexible and combine and allow visits or content viewing to be quantified and controlled. They are also compatible with various use licenses (Creative Commons Licenses), and with the open access movement with full respect for copyright and intellectual property rights of several countries, within the framework of content marketing and disintermediation, which allows the end user direct access to what they are looking for online, as well as the intra and intertextuality of their readings.

This last characteristic gives electronic journals the qualities of informativeness and international acceptability of content, thanks to the use of hypertext as a powerful and dynamic resource, which makes the conventional text expand multidimensionally through its implicit concepts, enriching the readings thanks to hyperdocumentary exploration ⁴.

Additionally, the digitization of scientific journals and the existence of metadata allow adding robots to meta tag the fields used or occupied by the content, not only to identify, find and classify information but also to retrieve, index, and catalog it. This meta tag of fields enhances the accessibility and visibility of the journal on the Internet as a parameter of quality of dissemination and circulation, in addition to its presence in databases and virtual libraries. This dissemination of content increases coverage in attracting foreign contributions or authorship and the possibility of consultation, use, and citation of the content, with the corresponding impact factor.

In the editorial process, there are things that remain and others that change with electronic publication ⁵.