Open access and multilingual approach to communication journals – the case and the editor’s perspective of Observatorio (OBS*) journal and the importance of open science for the knowledge society

Abstract

This paper is about the contribution of the network society to a more open and cross-cultural way of making and publishing science. Basically, and speaking of Observatorio (OBS*) e-journal that has been published by OberCom-Lisbon, we believe that it might be relevant to note the tendency that science, in relation to its distribution model, has been showing lately. We think more traditional ways of publishing science in closed platforms (as paper format), where legitimacy was only dependent on the strict editorial team, has definitely lost its space in scientific publications on open online platforms, where legitimacy is now managed from the contribution of several experts: a model named Open Science. The open science movement replaces the traditional, hierarchical and centralized logic with more dynamic horizontal collaboration among peers: a form of community production, decentralized and self-selective. One can say that the growth of the OBS* e-journal in Portugal, rather than other scientific journals in the same areas, but in more traditional formats, clearly demonstrates that a self-centred science with fewer users and whose distribution of produced knowledge implies bigger reliance on funding, is giving rise to a more open science with more users, for whom the transmission of produced knowledge is more autonomous, effective, cheaper, etc.