Regional meeting of journal editors: Struggling of small publishers to survive

At the end of May 2024, a traditional regional meeting of editors of small scientific journals in engineering disciplines was held at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade. This year the meeting gathered about 20 editors who discussed novelties, good practices as well as problems in academic publishing. The primary aim of these journals was to support the local scientific community and industry by providing a platform for presenting scientific advances, connecting research and practice, and assisting young scientists in publishing their research results. However, with the widespread adoption of measuring scientific perfor­mance by publication and citation statistics, the scientists lost interest in these journals as underrated in researcher evaluation systems. Thus, low quality of received as well as revised manuscripts, low response rates of reviewers, and, consequently, long processing times and high rejection rates are some of the main problems mentioned at the meeting. All these issues are usually managed by editorial offices, which often have neither technical nor human resources for such endeavors. Still, the conclusion of the meeting was that the benefits of small independent scientific journals are significant and worth efforts particularly for providing an alternative to the profit-oriented publishing and promoting societally relevant research and value-based scientific assessments.
Krajem maja 2024. godine na Mašinskom fakultetu u Beogradu održan je tradicionalni regionalni skup urednika malih naučnih časopisa iz inženjerskih disciplina. Ove godine skup je okupio oko 20 urednika koji su razgovarali o novinama, dobrim praksama, kao i problemima u akademskom izdavaštvu. Primarni cilj ovih časopisa bio je da podrže lokalnu naučnu zajednicu i industriju pružanjem platforme za predstavljanje naučnih dostignuća, povezivanje istraživanja i prakse i pomoć mladim naučnicima u objavljivanju rezultata svojih istraživanja. Međutim, sa usvajanjem široko rasprostranjenog merenja naučnog učinka putem statistike objavljivanja i broja citata, naučnici u regionu su izgubili interesovanje za ove časopise kao potcenjene u sistemima evaluacije istraživača. Dakle, loš kvalitet primljenih, kao i revidiranih rukopisa, niske stope odgovora recenzenata i, shodno tome, dugo vreme obrade i visoke stope odbijanja radova su neki od glavnih problema pomenutih na sastanku. Sve ove časopise najčešće vode redakcije koje često nemaju ni tehničke ni ljudske resurse za takve poduhvate. Ipak, na sastanku je zaključeno da su prednosti ovakvih malih nezavisnih naučnih časopisa značajne i vredne truda, posebno u pružanju alternative profitno orijentisanom izdavaštvu, kao i promovisanju društveno relevantnih istraživanja i procene naučnih doprinosa zasnovane na vrednostima.