Empowering Libraries and Growing Knowledge: How to Cultivate a New Open Access Journal

What’s involved in growing an open-access journal? How can you take the seed of an idea and develop it into something new and sustainable? This paper outlines the steps to growing knowledge through open access publishing using a journal development case study. The case is a newly created journal, the Journal of Advancement, Communication, and Development in Academic Libraries (JACDAL). This is an open-access journal dedicated to fostering innovation, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing in the library fundraising and communication community. Over 18 months, the journal progressed from an initial concept to the publication of its inaugural issue in January 2025. As a case study proceeding, the journal editors and publishing experts share how they got started, key technical, stylistic, and content choices, and how they promoted and intend to grow their new open journal. The results benefit general readers with open access publishing aspirations or goals and readers specifically interested in subject content for academic libraries, fundraising, and advancement topics. The paper enables others to benefit by learning about the unique journal content and from lessons and guidance about the development and editorial process of cultivating and growing a new open-access journal.