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Language Learning ISSN 0023-8333
OPEN PEER COMMENTARY
The Postprint Pledge – Toward a Culture
of Researcher-Driven Initiatives: A
Commentary on “(Why) Are Open Research
Practices the Future for the Study
of Language Learning?”
Ali H. Al-Hoorie aand Phil Hiver b
aRoyal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, Saudi Arabia bFlorida State University
Keywords open access; open research; open science; Cost of Knowledge
Marsden and Morgan-Short have provided an insightful, comprehensive, and
up-to-date treatment of open research in applied linguistics as well as the chal-
lenges involved in advancing the uptake of these practices. We join our voices
to theirs in support of open research as the future of language learning research.
Building on their analysis, we have focused on one aspect in particular, namely
open access (see also Al-Hoorie & Hiver, in press). Our goal was to highlight
the value of researcher-driven initiatives in promoting free and equitable access
to research for all.
Historically, before computers and the internet were widely available, pub-
lishing houses provided an essential service to the academic community by
copyediting and disseminating research. In return, publishers acquired copy-
right of published articles in order to sell their publications and recoup their
investment rather than charging authors for copyediting and dissemination.
For many decades, this was a productive win–win partnership. With the
CRediT author statement – Ali H. Al–Hoorie: conceptualization (lead); investigation (equal);
writing – original draft preparation (equal); writing – review & editing (equal). Phil Hiver: concep-
tualization (supporting); investigation (equal); writing – original draft preparation (equal); writing
– review & editing (equal).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ali H. Al-Hoorie, Royal Com-
mission for Jubail and Yanbu, PO Box 10099, Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia. Email:
hoorie_a@rcjy.edu.sa.
The handling editor for this article was Pavel Trofimovich.
Language Learning 73:S2, December 2023, pp. 388–391 388
© 2023 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan.
DO I : 10. 1111 / la n g . 1 2577
Al-Hoorie and Hiver The Postprint Pledge
ubiquity of computers and the internet, however, some have felt that this
commodification of scientific knowledge is no longer tenable and is hard to
reconcile with the contemporary emphasis on equity, diversity, and inclusion
(Buranyi, 2017). One consequence of this conventional model that came to be
known as the serial crisis was that even major Western universities (i.e., educa-
tional institutions with substantial, sustained public or private funding) felt the
financial strain on their library budgets, leaving them no choice but to cancel
subscriptions to the journals housing their own researchers’ publications.
One notable researcher-driven initiative that emerged in response to this
perceived crisis was the 2012 Cost of Knowledge initiative (http://www.
thecostofknowledge.com). It targeted one publisher in particular, Elsevier, for
among other things being proactively anti-open access. The initiative asked its
signatories to boycott publishing, reviewing, and/or doing editorial work for
Elsevier journals. Although over 20,000 academics have signed up, an evalu-
ation of the impact of this initiative showed that it has not been as successful
as the boycott originally intended. According to an analysis by Heyman et al.
(2016), 21% of the signatories were unidentifiable, 19% had not published at
all, 23% did publish in Elsevier in violation of their pledge, and only the re-
maining 37% adhered to their pledge by publishing exclusively in non-Elsevier
journals. Taking stock of its limited success, Heyman et al. (2016) argued that
“relatively few researchers have signed the petition in recent years, thus giving
the impression that the boycott has run its course” (p. 2).
In reflecting on why the Cost of Knowledge initiative was only modestly
successful, a number of possibilities have emerged. First, this initiative was
rather confrontational in nature, asking scholars to boycott a major publisher—
a move that could conceivably do more harm to early career scholars. Second,
because this initiative was interdisciplinary, there was not a clear mechanism
for signatories to form an identity, encourage each other, and hold themselves
accountable in order to ensure its durability. Perhaps more important, this ini-
tiative could be seen as a mere half-measure for two reasons. One the one hand,
refraining from citing articles published in Elsevier journals was never men-
tioned even though one would argue that not citing a journal might be more
effective than a boycott on publishing, reviewing, and doing editorial work for
it combined. When authors avoid citing a journal, this lowers its impact factor
and also discourages others from publishing in it even if they have not signed
up for such an initiative. On the other hand, although there might be good rea-
sons to target Elsevier, the problem is not unique to Elsevier. For example,
Elsevier was joined by the American Chemical Society and Wiley, the pub-
lisher of this journal, in their high-profile lawsuit against the Sci-Hub project
389 Language Learning 73:S2, December 2023, pp. 388–391
14679922, 2023, S2, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12577 by Cochrane Netherlands, Wiley Online Library on [13/12/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Al-Hoorie and Hiver The Postprint Pledge
(https://sci-hub.se) for circumventing their paywalls and paid subscription
services. Based on such actions, the business models employed in the run-
ning of major publishing houses appear incompatible with principles of open
research.
Against this backdrop, we launched the Postprint Pledge for applied lin-
guistics. This researcher-driven initiative asks academics to share online post-
prints of their articles. While a preprint is the version that has yet to undergo
peer review, a postprint is the accepted version, or final draft, that has not been
copyedited by a publisher. Reviewing the copyright policies of 60 applied lin-
guistics journals, we found that most of them permit authors to make their
postprints available online, though a few publishers impose an embargo, typi-
cally of one year. Even with embargos, sharing the manuscript toward the final
stages of the review process and before the final acceptance notice may qual-
ify it as a preprint, thus allowing authors to benefit from the liberal preprint
policies that most publishers have. The take-home message is that authors do
not simply lose all of their rights when signing a copyright agreement with a
publisher. We therefore encourage applied linguistics researchers to sign the
Postprint Pledge at https://www.ali-alhoorie.com/postprint-pledge.
The question raised by this and similar open science initiatives is how
long the current publication models will be sustainable. As we explained at
the beginning of this commentary, in the past there was a need for publish-
ers to provide copyediting services and to disseminate published work. With
the availability of computers, the internet, and open science infrastructure, we
invite our fellow researchers, professional organizations and societies, and ed-
ucational institutions to consider the ultimate usefulness of and need for con-
ventional publishing models. With an estimate of over 70% of all research still
behind paywalls (Piwowar et al., 2018), clearly a major impediment to scien-
tific progress, we call for current and future generations of researchers to join
existing initiatives and to develop various new ones with the goal of promoting
free and equitable access to research for all.
Final revised version accepted 12 March 2023
References
Al-Hoorie, A. H., & Hiver, P. (in press). Open science in applied linguistics: An
introduction to metascience. In L. Plonsky (Ed.), Open science in applied
linguistics. John Benjamins.
Buranyi, S. (2017, June 27). Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific
publishing bad for science? The Guardian.
Language Learning 73:S2, December 2023, pp. 388–391 390
14679922, 2023, S2, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12577 by Cochrane Netherlands, Wiley Online Library on [13/12/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Al-Hoorie and Hiver The Postprint Pledge
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-
publishing-bad-for-science
Heyman, T., Moors, P., & Storms, G. (2016). On the Cost of Knowledge: Evaluating
the boycott against Elsevier. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics,1, Article
7. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2016.00007
Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley,
A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the
prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ,6, Article e4375.
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375
391 Language Learning 73:S2, December 2023, pp. 388–391
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