In 2020, the editorial team of Psicológica, consisting of the editor-in-chief Pedro Macizo and editorial advisors Daniel Sanabria and Ángel Correa, met at the University of Granada with Pandelis Perakakis, cofounder of Open Scholar, an international organisation developing and promoting an innovative academic publishing model based on the collaboration between scholars and librarians, and utilising the infrastructure provided by existing institutional repositories. During this meeting, the group made the decision to transition Psicológica from a Gold Open Access model —where the journal was still linked to a commercial publisher— to a Diamond Open Access model, where both authors and readers have free access to all published contents. This transition was made possible thanks to a previous collaboration between Open Scholar and DIGITAL.CSIC, the repository of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the largest institutional repository in Spain and one of the most prominent in Europe.
This earlier collaboration had resulted in the development of the Open Peer Review Module (OPRM), an open-source tool that enables institutional repositories to offer open peer review services. With the integration of OPRM, DIGITAL.CSIC became capable of hosting all the necessary publication functions for Psicológica, which, in 2022, successfully severed its ties with its commercial publisher to become the first indexed academic journal to be exclusively published by an institutional repository.
This transition not only eliminated publication fees for authors, but, perhaps even more importantly, introduced several innovations in the academic publishing process. All reviews are signed by their authors and published as individual objects in the repository, each acquiring a unique DOI and being linked to the reviewed article via appropriate metadata. Moreover, the OPRM includes an innovative reputation system, developed by the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC) in Catalonia, based on quantitative evaluations provided by reviewers. These evaluations are further weighted by the reputation of the reviewers themselves, which is dynamically adjusted through feedback provided by the authors. Alongside these changes, the journal expanded its scope by including registered reports, as well as publishing research data and software code as essential components of scientific output.
The innovations implemented by Psicológica were met with enthusiasm and support from the journal’s parent Spanish Society for Experimental Psychology (SEPEX), as well as its extensive network of national and international editorial advisors. Furthermore, the journal’s pioneering model has had a notable impact on the international academic publishing landscape. It has been recognised in academic publications, and highlighted in a Nature correspondence. The example of Psicológica demonstrates that the infrastructure necessary to realise the vision of free, sustainable scholarly publishing already exists. Institutional repositories offer valid, effective, and non-profit publishing platforms. They are ubiquitous, with nearly every academic institution having one, and they are managed by expert librarians who ensure that the content adheres to open standards, guaranteeing perpetual access for communities and indexing services alike, thus fostering reuse and innovation. The collaboration between academic societies, which offer expert review services, and librarians, who curate all scientific outputs—including software and data—presents a sustainable and superior alternative to the outdated and costly commercial publishing system.
In less than four years of operation under the new model, Psicológica has published over 150 original contributions, including research articles, open reviews, and author responses. The editorial team was significantly strengthened by the arrival of Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado (formerly of the Autonomous University of Madrid and now at the University of Granada) as the new editor-in-chief, bringing her energy and efficiency to the journal’s operations. The editorial team is further supported by a group of technical editors, including Fernando Ojedo (University of Granada), who has been serving the journal since before the transition, as well as Irune Fernández (International University of La Rioja) and Inmaculada Fajardo (University of Valencia). More recently, the editorial advisory board also welcomed Julio Santiago (University of Granada), whose extensive experience in academic publishing is instrumental in shaping the journal’s future trajectory. However, the real driving force behind Psicológica is its dedicated team of over 70 associate editors and approximately 200 reviewers, who contribute their expertise to ensuring the methodological rigor and quality of the journal’s content through comprehensive qualitative and quantitative evaluations.
Looking ahead, Psicológica aims to expand its editorial team by introducing a Reproducibility Team, tasked with ensuring that all published articles are accompanied by well-curated data and code, facilitating reproducibility by independent research groups. Additionally, the journal intends to establish a Community Engagement Team to enhance the dissemination of its content across relevant databases, scholarly communities, and public media outlets. Importantly, the editorial team plans to actively engage in national and international efforts to reform academic evaluation, collaborating with organizations such as ANECA and AEI in Spain, and with international initiatives like DORA and CoARA, to integrate its innovative model into the evolving landscape of academic evaluation.
The journal Psicológica seeks to honor the legacy of its founders not only by continuing the long-standing tradition of excellence in experimental psychology, as mentioned in the commemorative editorial by Professor Pío Tudela, but also by pushing the boundaries of what is possible in open, transparent, and sustainable scholarly publishing. Psicológica demonstrates how the collaboration between scholars and librarians can safeguard the integrity and accessibility of academic content, reinforcing the vision that scientific knowledge should be part of the global commons, free from commercial interests.
Editorial Team, Psicológica