By Georgia Kerrigan ’27
At a packed reception of faculty, students and staff earlier this month, the Libraries debuted their second open access, in-house publishing project aimed at reinventing the academic publication model.
Northwestern University Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought is produced in conjunction with a similarly named multi-institutional research initiative in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. Like many journals of scholarly thought, it is an annual, peer-reviewed publication; unlike most journals, however, it is entirely free to authors, readers, and institutions.
RPLaRT (pronounced “ripple art”) was created to be “open access,” a rising publishing model in modern libraries that allows for varying degrees of unrestricted use of materials typically locked behind paywalls. More and more libraries are committing resources to support open access in order to disseminate more information, more widely, said Aerith Netzer, Northwestern’s digital publishing and repository librarian.
“Libraries realized that, instead of just serving as a department to purchase literature from publishers, we can make it cheaper for the university and have more search impact if we just publish the material ourselves,” she said.
At the launch event, the model was hailed by the RPLaRT editorial team as a breakthrough. Bradley Underwood ’25, associate director of the research initiative and associate editor of the new journal, spoke about his long-gestating vision to launch an online venture to give a publishing outlet for the burgeoning field.
However, his research convinced him that costs and other logistical barriers were so prohibitive that “surely there’s some Faustian bargain to be made” to achieve that dream, he said. But after working with Netzer, he marveled at the capacity of a library to engage in publishing and ease the burdens of a start-up. “Now here I am with my soul intact.”
From left: Aerith Netzer, digital publishing and repository librarian, and members of the RPLaRT editorial board — Bradley Underwood ’25, Randall Poole (College of St. Scholastica), Susan McReynolds (Northwestern) — and Sergei Kalugin of Weinberg’s Media and Design Studio.
The Libraries’ first platinum open-access journal venture was 2021’s Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, published with the School of Communication. At the time, transgender studies was considered a new field, and the BATS journal filled a gap in literature. The open-access, library-published model allowed researchers such as founding editor and Northwestern faculty member TJ Billard to quickly disseminate field-defining thought pieces and research that could engage an academic community hungry for more.
The inaugural issue of the RPLaRT also fills a need for scholars eager to share ideas — particularly in a peer-reviewed, cite-able, and cost-effective way, said editors Susan McReynolds (Northwestern faculty) and Randall Poole (College of St. Scholastica). The inaugural issue features articles such as “Varieties of Belief in The Brothers Karamazov” by Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson and “Momentous Intersections: A Comparative View on Russian and Jewish Spiritual Traditions” by Emory University professor Mikhail Epstein. Other articles analyze 19th century Russian empiricism, universal themes in great Russian literature, and pre-revolution Marxist thought.
Open access is the key
According to Netzer, the open access movement is having its own revolutionary moment. Spurred by efforts like BATS and RPLaRT, more and more academic groups are starting to envision a world where their own fields can have a more intimate, customized, and low-cost way to get ideas into the world.
“The beauty of open source is that the products are free for anyone to use, they are built by the community, and there’s no cost to it,” Netzer said. “Everybody shares it. It’s a very collaborative and openly shared community.”
Not only are library-led open source projects cost-effective and more responsive than large publishers, they offer a better commitment to privacy “due to our commitment to not track or serve advertisements to readers,” Netzer said.
Scholarly literature used to function as an “open ecosystem,” where materials were shared freely within academia, she said. In the past few decades, however, this ecosystem has transformed into one where large private publishers are the gatekeepers of academic journals, turning scholarly material access into an economic endeavor.
“Private publishers serve as a two-way gate. Researchers have to pay an article processing charge to make their journal open access,” Netzer said, noting that the most high-profile databases charge upwards of $10,000 per article. “Then, that same research group, via their library, has to purchase that article back from the publisher to view their own work.”
That’s because making articles “free” still comes with costs that publishers must offset, thanks to the loss of traditional publishing revenue. Netzer added that publishers own a scholar’s article after it is submitted, even if the company chooses not to publish it, making for an altogether financially and logistically restrictive system of academic accessibility.
Managing the true cost of acquiring all these published materials “is very invisible work,” Netzer said. “People think, ‘Oh, I don’t need to use the library,’ but every time they read something from (mainstream publishers like) JSTOR or Elsevier, they are – it’s the library who got all of that.”
But while low costs and customization are appealing to scholars, the big publishers still have an advantage: brand recognition. In a profession associated with the motto “publish or perish,” it makes sense that researchers have long pursued larger publishing companies with the greatest readership.
And as always, citations — how frequently one’s own research is quoted and built upon by others — is a main metric of impact in academia. Some scholars feel the need to see their works in the most well-established journals to confirm the value of their work, and to convey to others that their writings are equally worthy of citation.
And yet, Netzer notes, recent research shows that open access articles have a greater likelihood of being cited than those behind paywalls. And is it any wonder? They’re so affordable and easy to access.
As a new initiative, open access publications alone cannot yet fulfill the volume of material the library provides.
“I yearn for a future where we don’t have to buy any more articles, but I am also realistic, and I don’t think that is coming soon,” said Netzer.
But one journal at a time, she is closer to seeing her dream come true.
Georgia Kerrigan is a Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications sophomore