THE IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL AND REGIONAL JOURNALS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICAL PUBLISHING

In this letter, we advocate that local and regional journals (LRJs) can contribute to sustainable development and ethical publishing by empowering local researchers while enriching and diversifying local and global knowledge commons. To achieve this, LRJs should ideally prioritize three aspects of their publishing model. First, a diamond open access model to allow the global intellectual investment in such journals, as well as limitless accessibility to their content. Second, diverse article types to allow for increased access to publication. Finally, quality control to avoid the pitfalls of junk science, scholarly redundancy, and the risk of obtaining a “predatory” open access label, LRJs are under pressure to implement stringent journal management, rigorous editorial policies, and recognized ethical policies.