WikiJournal User Group/Meetings/2020-04-30

WikiJournal User Group
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated

Attendees

Mikael Haggstrom
Sarah Haggstrom
Thomas Shafee
Business lawyer from Chipman Mazzucco Emerson LLC

Agenda

Preliminary meeting to discuss whether it'd be possible to include something in the bylaws that would prevent the journals ever being sold to a megapublisher or converted into a for-profit publisher

Background

The WikiJournal User Group has a set of bylaws that includes (most relevant points below). However, I’m seeking advice on whether there is a way to word something like:

“The organisation will never be sold to another publisher.”

This is because a number of other Open Access journal publishers (e.g. Hindawi, Biomed Central, F1000 etc), have increasingly been bought up by the megapublishers (e.g. Elsevier/Wiley/Springer).

Current most relevant bylaws:

II: STATEMENT_OF_PURPOSE The mission of WikiJournal is to receive scholarly works with no cost for the authors, apply quality checks on submissions by peer review, and make accepted works available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.
IX.1: Dedication_of_Assets The property of WikiJournal is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and no part of the net income or assets of this WikiJournal shall ever inure to the benefit of any Administrative Board Member or to the benefit of any private individual other than compensation in a reasonable amount to its contractors for services rendered.
IX.2: Dissolution Upon the dissolution or winding-up of WikiJournal, its assets remaining after payment, or provision for payment, of all debts and liabilities of the WikiJournal shall be distributed to The Wikimedia Foundation or another mission-aligned organization.

What wording would need to be added or changed - and is such a thing achievable in bylaws?

Notes

Aims:
- to be able to prevent future undermining of journal core missions or sale to megapublishers who could do the same
- to be seen to be doing so as a strong public statement, i.e. be able to show people "we take this seriously and have put things in place to prevent it ever happening / make it impossible"
May be able to prohibit certain ways of raising revenue (would allow us to prevent paywalling)
- e.g. prohibit revenue from subscriptions, APCs, sale of WikiJournal to a for-profit publisher
- e.g. permit only revenue from donations, grants, other?
May be able to prevent sale of certain assets or asset classes
- IP like name, trademark, maybe web addresses?
- We will need to think about what else (if anything)
- Need to be careful as preventing sale of assets can also affect dissolution in the event that the organisation fully shuts down (though tbh, in such a case we might still not want the name etc sold off to someone unscrupulous!)
  - Maybe specify that all WikiJournal assets will upon any dissolution belong to Wikimedia Foundation
Could make certain actions or classes of require supermajority vote (e.g. 80%)
Next action items for us:
- What assets (IP or physical) might need protection?
- What actions or revenue methods might need prohibiting?
- What bylaw items might also benefit from requiring a supermajority vote?
- Collate these and present to admin (and editorial?) board
- Present these to Ward to draft up bylaw suggestions if/when funding available from grant application
- Confirm with Ward that we are permitted to make this above list of notes public on-wiki

As Mikael noted: "The rationale is that these are the main targets of an outright attempt to steal the entire project, but I'm open for additional suggestions too."

Added later

Below is an email from 20 September 2021 illustrating the sort of thing we may want to prevent:

Dear Editor/Publisher,
Greetings!
My name is [name redacted] and I am the Acquisition Manager for [publisher redacted], one of the providers of consultation-based services in Publishing Industry. We have a proposal for the journal.
As we are constantly working to broaden our spectra, we are interested in acquiring journal " WikiJournal of Science". We strongly believe that it will add value to our assets and would definitely boost our reader’s base. I request you to let us know if there is any scope to take this proposal forward. If yes, we would like to come up with a quotation for complete acquisition of the journal. A prompt reciprocation to this mail would be highly appreciated. Wishing you a positive year ahead.
Best regards,
[name redacted]