Reflections on the demise of First Monday

Jan Erik Frantsvåg

doi:10.7557/11.8673

Authors

Jan Erik Frantsvåg UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3413-8799

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/11.8673

Keywords:

First Monday, Diamond journal, funding, sustainability

Abstract

The journal First Monday, an early Open Access journal without article processing charges, announced recently that they would cease publishing with their May 2026 issue, after 30 years of publishing. This calls for some reflections. First Monday has been a well-respected, much-used journal of standing in its field. It has published relatively much over a long period. That such a journal does not see fit to continue publishing is a sign of problems in institution-based publishing, primarily lack of sufficient institutional financial backing for Diamond OA journals.

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Author Biography

Jan Erik Frantsvåg, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Jan Erik Frantsvåg is an Academic Librarian at the library of UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He has been interested in Open Access for the last 30 years and has worked full-time on Open Access for the last 20 years. He has been a reader of First Monday since the year 2001, and authored his first articles in the journal.

References

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