Abstract: Open journal publishing, as well as the broader internet publishing phenomenon, has the potential to advance innovation in scholarly communication. The past decade has seen a flourishing of independent, open access journals, but too often these journals replicate traditional models of scholarly communication, perpetuating the inequities, bias, cronyism, abusive peer-review processes, and disciplinary silos that have corrupted the scholarly publication ecosystem.1 Institutional and for-profit barriers to access to the scholarly record amplify these problems and exacerbate misperceptions of scholarly work. In 2019, the Digital Frontiers community founded the online journal Unbound: A Journal of Digital Scholarship.2 Digital Frontiers was established in 2012 as an inclusive community for digital scholarship practitioners in a range of disciplines.3 Inspired by the recent work of Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Roopika Risam, and others, our vision of values-driven scholarly communication addresses the needs of underserved and marginalized communities within the disciplines by building publication models based on open access, transparent peer review, inclusivity, interdisciplinarity, community, mentorship, and an ethic of care. In what follows, we’ll offer a snapshot of our intentions in establishing a values-driven open journal and look at ways these values can be incorporated into the bones of a journal—from its mission statement and editorial policies to its peer-review and submission guidelines. Unbound serves as an example of how core humanistic values and open practices might be integrated into a scholarly journal while maintaining a commitment to intellectual rigor, quality writing, editorial best practices, and publishing ethics.
