Mathematics overlay journals: different perspectives on a success set to grow

An economical, high-quality and collaborative solution, math epijournals illustrate the success of documentation organized in open science by and for the community. Presentation and details with members of the monitoring committee of the Epijournal of Algebraic Geometry (EpiGA) and Timothy Gowers, founder of the journal Discrete Analysis.

With

• Pierre-Emmanuel Chaput, professor at the University of Lorraine (IECL), member of the EpiGA monitoring committee
• Benoît Claudon, professor at the University of Rennes (IRMAR), vice-president of publications at the Société Mathématique de France, member of the EpiGA monitoring committee
• Sir William Timothy Gowers, professor at the Collège de France and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), foreign associate member of the Académie des Sciences, Fields Medal winner (1998) and founder of Discrete Analysis.
• Gianluca Pacienza, professor at the University of Lorraine (IECL), member of the EpiGA monitoring committee

What is an epijournal?

In the continuity of a model in open science, an epijournal (or epireview) is “an epi-journal is an electronic journal that does not host its own papers, but rather contains links to preprints that are hosted on a preprint server such as arXiv or HAL,” explains Timothy Gowers, professor at the Collège de France and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), Fields Medalist (1998).

“This is the only difference with so-called 'classic' journals, but it is a significant one,” explains the EpiGA monitoring committee. ”Indeed, to submit an article to an epijournal, the article must be deposited in an open archive. Then the evaluation process follows its usual course (peer review, single-blind, double-blind or open depending on the policy of the epijournal in question) and, if the article is accepted, the published version will first be deposited in the open archive as a new version of the initial submission: the article will in fact be accessible to everyone in the open archive and on the journal's website. If we go back to the etymology, an epijournal can therefore be seen as an “additional layer” of an open archive (from the Greek ἐπί “over, above”). The English term is even more meaningful: “overlay journal”.

How is publication in an epijournal organized?

The EpiGA monitoring committee: “A platform is needed to interconnect the open archives and the editorial management site. In the case of EpiGA, this is Épisciences, a project of the Centre for Direct Science Communication (CCSD). This platform is linked to the archives arXiv, HAL and Zenodo.

Articles published in epijournals are usually standardized to unify their appearance and style (and link them to the journal). This is the case for EpiGA: the articles are standardized and a style sheet is applied. This is work that we have been able to outsource thanks to several financial backers: mainly the Fonds National pour la Science Ouverte (FNSO) and the joint documentation service of the University of Lorraine, but also the University of Amsterdam and the KOALA project.

How is your epijournal supported, both financially and in terms of human resources?

The EpiGA monitoring committee: “A journal like EpiGA makes it possible to control costs since they are spread over several well-identified items:

• The work of researchers, whether as editors, proofreaders or authors. This work is almost never quantified in the financial statement of an academic journal.
• The work of bringing up to standard. As explained above, we can finance it thanks to various sources of support, and it is a cost that does not increase inconsiderately because it does not require an extremely sophisticated infrastructure. As far as EpiGA is concerned, this part of the financing represents approximately €8,000 per year for 800 published pages.
• Finally, the platform and editorial management system. This part is completely taken care of by the CCSD and it is therefore (once again) public money that finances this last item. As the platform currently hosts 36 epi-journals, this part is therefore shared with a large number of academic actors, which automatically lowers costs."

Timothy Gowers: "Up to now, Discrete Analysis has been funded partly by Cambridge University and partly by a private donation from the Stanhill Foundation. But the main way in which epi-journals respond to the rising costs of publishing is by showing that they are largely unnecessary. For example, Discrete Analysis publishes around 20 articles a year, and our annual running costs are lower than the article publishing charge for a single article published in a typical journal of one of the major commercial publishers. To scale this up to a journal that handled more articles, it would be necessary to add administrative costs, but the total cost would still be far lower than that of one of the major publishers."

How do you feel about the success of these e-journals?

Timothy Gowers: “The epi-journals that I have been involved in have become successfully established. There are some difficulties at first, such as the fact that a new journal does not have any reputation (good or bad), and some countries insist that their academics submit only to journals that belong to certain lists, or have impact factors. However, one can combat these disadvantages with a sufficiently strong editorial board, which gives the relevant community confidence in the quality of the journal. And of course, one can increase that confidence by being selective about the papers one publishes. I was very surprised at how quickly Discrete Analysis acquired a reputation for being a high-quality journal, and we receive a steady stream of submissions. The same is true of another journal, Advances in Combinatorics, which I would say is now the top specialist combinatorics journal, which it achieved by the simple measure of accepting only papers above a certain level, even if at first that meant not publishing very many papers."

The EpiGA monitoring committee: “It is difficult to speak on behalf of the other journals hosted by the Épisciences platform, and even more difficult for the epijournals that exist outside of it. However, there is clearly a dynamic of creating journals on Épisciences: when we launched EpiGA in 2016, there were hardly more than 5 journals on the platform, whereas there are currently 36! As for EpiGA, it is now one of the leading journals in the field of algebraic geometry (alongside Algebraic Geometry from the Foundation Compositio Mathematica and Journal of Algebraic Geometry from the American Mathematical Society). The increase in the journal's visibility can also be seen in the incoming flow of submissions: around sixty submissions per year, which for a journal specializing in mathematics is a sign of good health. Moreover, submissions come from all over the world and not just from France, which means that, although it is distributed by a French platform and has a French title, the journal has an international reach. In conclusion, we are very happy (and a little proud too!) with the progress of EpiGA.”

What advice would you give to a colleague who wants to start an epijournal?

The EpiGA monitoring committee: “Rather than giving advice, we prefer to share what has been important to us: strong motivation and cohesion among the project initiators, the fact that part of our community is sensitive to the problems of scientific publishing, and the choice of internationally renowned editorial board members, a guarantee of the project's quality and visibility.”

Timothy Gowers: “First and foremost, I would say that it is important to have an editorial board with people in it who will inspire confidence among the people you hope will submit to the journal. For that it may be important to have a clear idea of what exactly the aim of the journal is: do you want to create a journal in an area that did not previously have a specialized journal (Discrete Analysis plays this role for additive combinatorics, for example, though in fact it is broader than that), or is your main aim to have an epi-journal in an area that currently has only expensive traditional journals? Whatever the aim, try to stick to it so that the journal can quickly establish an identity. For example, if it aims to be a highly selective journal, then do not be tempted to accept lower-quality papers just to make up the numbers. 

A harder piece of advice to follow is to publicize the journal as much as you can. I was fortunate enough to have a significant social media presence, so I could spread the word quickly. If you are not in this position, then perhaps it is a good idea to find somebody who is and who would be willing to help let people know about the new journal."