Interview with Benjamin Mullins, editor of the Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics

During this year's Open Access Week, with the theme “Community over Commercialization,” the University Library was eager to draw attention to academic journals that operate under the Diamond Open Access model. This model ensures that scholarly knowledge is freely accessible to all, at no cost to authors or readers. In this model, all content is led by and owned by scholarly communities.

To better understand what running a journal according to this model means, the University Library interviewed Benjamin Mullins, editor of the Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics (EJPE) and PhD candidate at ESPhil. The EJPE is one of the Diamond Open Access journals that have emerged at Erasmus University, and as such it offers a glimpse of what it means for researchers to decide to put community over commercialization within the walls of the university.

What led you to be interested in working for the EJPE? 

Mullins: "The EJPE is run by a team of editors from the Erasmus Institute of Philosophy and Economics. Being able to join this team was a significant motivation for me. And, as it turns outs, rightly so, since working with the excellent editors at the journal has been an immense privilege and source of fulfilment for me."

"I was also interested in the subject matter of the journal (philosophy of economics). Becoming an editor provided the opportunity to learn more about this. It also provided the opportunity to develop various skills one needs as an editor, and the chance to strengthen networks by working with colleagues outside of the journal."

What does your work at the EJPE entail? 

Mullins: "The work involves several different things. First off, each editor is assigned a specific role to discharge, such as marketing, secretary, webmaster, treasurer, etc. On top of this, there are the day-to-day editorial duties. We are a double-blind peer-reviewed journal. Reviews are written on a voluntarily basis. Our job as editors is to act as gatekeepers to ensure that any article that gets sent out for review surpasses a sufficient threshold for so being. It also requires us to make sure that submitted manuscripts meet other requisite standards, such as being within the scope of the journal, or displaying sufficient scholarship, etc."

"Furthermore, the journal publishes a range of other content, such as book reviews, interviews, obituaries, PhD summaries, and so on. All of which require editing and, in some cases, soliciting. That’s the main role that we do as editors. But the journal is embedded in the Erasmus Institute of Philosophy of Economics. The academics and master students of this institution also play a significant role in contributing to the journal and are due a lot of credit for this too."

What do you think is the appeal of working for a Diamond Open Access journal? 

Mullins: "The appeal is simple, I think. Namely, that everything we publish is free and accessible for everyone. You don’t need to be part of an institution that has enough funds to access it, nor even in academia for that matter. So, there are strong egalitarian considerations that make it appealing. Or at least that’s what I find appealing."

What are the challenges of working for a Diamond Open Access journal?  

Mullins: "There are different models of Open Access publishing. There is the Gold model and the Hybrid model, for example, which have Article Processing Charges (APCs). These fees get paid to the publisher of some journal. Other journals may be published by some society where a membership fee is required. At any rate, on these models, there is a source of income that is associated with the journal in one way or another."

"The downside of this is that it tends to penalise the worse off. Which is a good argument against such models. Diamond Open Access journals have no such fees. They thereby have no such income. But there are nevertheless costs associated with publishing such journals (especially if you want to be just as professional as non-Diamond OA journals). So, funds need to be found elsewhere. This is one of the challenges I would say."

What do you think institutions should do to support initiatives such as the EJPE? 

Mullins: "I’m not sure how much of a general answer I can give to this question. So let me give a more specific one instead. The EJPE could be supported by having a guaranteed income source (that’s, say, reviewed every five years). This would reduce the workload on editors and provide security in enabling us to plan for the long-term. The EJPE could do with institutional support with respect to its IT systems. For example, journals use Online Journal Systems (OJS’s). There are costs and work involved in using and managing these which could be bolstered with institutional support. 

"Editors generally have some academic training in their field of expertise. But, in my case for example, I barely know how to switch on a computer, let alone how to deal with some complicated IT system! It is my belief that institutional support in this domain would be greatly beneficial to journals like the EJPE."

"Diamond open access journals could also benefit from more standardised and institutionalised support with basic editorial work – it would be really wonderful if the EUR Library had an outlet where we could send manuscripts for copyediting and formatting, and where er could get support with regards to marketing. I should say, though, we have already received generous funding from the EUR Library’s Open Access fund and from the University of Amsterdam that can help with this. And we are very grateful for this support."