Shaping the culture of scientific publishing – the (super) powers of the EGU Publications Committee

Did you ever wonder about our current culture of academic publishing, its ideals, inadequacies and evolution over time? We often take this culture as a given, we might complain about its issues and injustices but it feels like we cannot do anything about it. However, things are not quite this hopeless. We might not be able to influence the big commercial publishing companies and how they run things, but we can make a difference in the publishing world of EGU and its grassroots-run family of high-quality scientific journals. Here, powers lie largely with the EGU Publications Committee, which is made up of the Executive Editors of all EGU Journals and which is in constant close communication with our service provider Copernicus Publications and with the editorial manager in the EGU office.

In this committee, we push the boundaries of interactive open access publishing and decide on publishing policies, such as how to

• improve diversity and inclusion of authors, reviewer and editors,
• support Early Career Scientists,
• offer a fair and transparent review process,
• deal with impact factors and their widely recognized limitations in assessing importance, impact, or quality of both academic work and journals,
• deal with the use of AI in academic publishing

These are real leverages where we as active scientists aim to make academic publishing fair, inclusive and transparent, as also reflected in our slogan ‘transparent, community-driven, not-for-profit’. Unlike commercial publishers, article processing charges of EGU journals are re-invested into EGU activities, such as workshops and trainings.

If you are interested in hearing more about the work of the EGU Publications Committee or have any suggestions and questions, we welcome you to visit our PICO presentation.