The Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences defines publication channel as a medium through which the publication reaches its audience, and which requires a publication decision of the publisher.
The most typical publication channels are various printed and/or electronic publication series (e.g. journals, books series and conference series) and publishing houses. Publication channels usually aim to publish selected content aimed at a specific target group, such as experts and professionals in their specific field of science or the public. The Ministry of Education and Culture’s publication type classification (only in Finnish) is partly based on the target audience of the publication channel. However, the distinction is not always explicit, and content intended for several audiences can be published in the same channel.
Scientific publication channels are primarily specialised in publishing scientific research findings. Scientific journals and books are mainly published by research organisations, learned societies and commercial publishers. The traditional roles of scientific publication channels have included building the knowledge base for science, disseminating research data, validating the quality of findings, distributing credit and building scientific communities. Expert editorial boards or editorial committees have defined a set of practices and standards for editorial work and peer review, which all manuscripts submitted to the channel are subject to before publication.
The digital operating environment and the demand for open science and research data have also had an impact on the operations of publication channels. Since the 1990s, new types of scientific publication channels have emerged, such as immediate open-access mega journals, publication platforms and repositories. These aim to reduce the role of editors and referees as the gatekeepers of science, and the quality evaluation focuses on the validity of scientific implementing and reporting, rather than on the novelty, significance and impact of results
- Mega journal (e.g. PLOS ONE) refers to digital scientific journal that has a larger publication volume than regular journals and whose publication volume is not limited by the number of pages printed or by a specific subject area.
- On open research publishing platforms (e.g. F1000 Research), the editorial board conducts a light moderation of the preprint, but the decision of publishing is made by external experts invited to an open peer review.
- In open access repositories, articles are published without a peer review organised by the channel, either directly as such (e.g. Zenodo) or with minimal moderation by the editorial team (e.g. ArXiv). Overlay journals, a new type of journals, do not produce their own content but select publications from open sources such as open access repositories.
Traditional subscription-based publication channels have also altered their methods of operation and provide open access in different ways. Most subscription-based journals are currently “hybrid open-access” publications, where authors can pay a fee (APC, Article Processing Charge) to provide open access to individual articles, or where it is possible to parallel publish manuscripts in an open access repository. This practice is also increasingly common among publishing houses. In addition to this, fully open access journals and publishing houses have been established, where publishing is either subject to APCs or free of charge for both authors and readers (this is called Diamond OA). You can read more about the Open access to publications in the chapter on the subject in this guide.
From an early stage, publication metrics have paid attention to the principles governing the operation of publication channels and sought to model the specialisation of scientific journals by field of science and the increase in their volume:
- Bradford’s law: If scientific journals are arranged in descending order according to the production of articles in a specific field, they can be divided into a core, with journals more strongly oriented towards that field, or into several zones surrounding the core. The number of articles on the zones is the same as in the core, but the number of journals publishing articles increases by a proportion of 1:n:n² compared to the core.
- De Solla Price, in turn, has modelled an exponential increase in the number of publication channels, especially scientific journals, which has reached a saturation point, according to subsequent research.
The total number of scientific publication channels in the world is surprisingly difficult to quantify comprehensively, including international, regional and local channels publishing in both English and other languages. According to the broadest estimates, there may be more than 70,000 scientific journals and tens of thousands of publishing houses. The most commonly used international and national registers and data sources for scientific publication channels cover only a fraction of these, for example:
- Web of Science: approx. 22,000 titles (SCI, SSCI, AHCI, ESCI)
- Scopus: approx. 23,000 titles
- DOAJ: approx. 17,500 titles
- Publication Forum: approx. 31,000 titles and 3,600 book publishers
The main international persistent identifiers associated with the publication channels are ISSN, ISBN and DOI:
- ISSN: International Standard Serial Number is an international standard identifier used to identify journals, series or other periodicals. It allows periodicals to be identified and distinguished from other periodicals.
- ISBN: International Standard Book Number is an international standard identifier used to identify books or other monographs. ISBN is not primarily a publication channel identifier, but ISBN includes a publisher identifier that can be used to identify publishers providing publication channels.
- DOI: Digital Object Identifier is a persistent identifier provided for electronic documents, texts, images, audio, videos and software. DOI is not primarily a publication channel identifier, but DOI includes a publisher identifier that can be used to identify publication series or publishers providing publication channels.
In addition to this, operators listing publication channels may have their own local identifiers. For example, publication channels classified by the Publication Forum (journal/series, book publisher or conference) have a unique JUFO ID.
Sources
Forsman, M. (2022) Julkaisut ja tieteen mittaaminen: Bibliometriikan käännekohtia. 2. tarkastettu painos. Enostone kustannus. Available: https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/343967/Forsman_Julkaisut_ja_tieteellinen_mittaaminen_2022.pdf?sequence=1
Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. and Mabe, M. (2018) The STM report. An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing. 5th edn. The Hague: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. Available: https://www.stm-assoc.org/2018_10_04_STM_Report_2018.pdf
Pölönen, J., Guns, R., Kulczycki, E., Sivertsen, G. and Engels, T.C. (2021) National lists of scholarly publication channels: An overview and recommendations for their construction and maintenance. Journal of Data and Information Science, 6(1), pp. 50-86. Available: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2021-0004
Schaffner, A.C. (1994) The future of scientific journals: Lessons from the past. Information technology and libraries, 13(4), pp. 239-248. Available: https://faculty.washington.edu/jwj/lis520/schaffner.html
The Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences, 2022: Avoin tiede: julkaisukanava. Available: https://tieteentermipankki.fi/wiki/Nimitys:julkaisukanava