Public funding of science publishing: Why we are open access

Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs is a publicly funded journal. As such, it follows a platinum open access model (sometimes referred to as sponsored or diamond), allowing immediate access to online content without subscription fees or license payments. In addition, authors are not charged to publish. The journal is fortunate enough to have all the costs of publishing met by its sponsoring organisations. In addition to our owner, the Nordic Welfare Centre (NVC), our main sponsors have been the social and health departments and ministries in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and, from 2020 we are also involved in new cooperation with Systembolaget in Sweden and the University of Helsinki in Finland. We also receive journal support from the Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS). All economic support is applied for annually, and as long as our sponsors are public institutions the content is available open access to the public.

New university setting

Starting in 2020, the editorial office of NAD has moved from the Helsinki-based NVC office and is now situated at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. The move has progressed rather quickly. The task of investigating whether the journal could move to the university was given by the editorial board to chairman Christoffer Tigerstedt and the editors, in December 2018 and as of January 2020 this move is already a fait accompli.

The move to the university was seen as a possibility for the journal to be situated in a strong research milieu as there is an expanding research group concerned with addiction and lifestyle at the university. This is an infrastructure and expertise the journal can gain from – similar research group integrations have been important for the journal in the past (e.g., at the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, STAKES). Furthermore, the contracts for Nordic cooperation personnel (which the journal was tied to at the NVC), were originally planned for a civil servants’ rotation system, adapted to Nordic civil servants who were to be temporarily on leave from their departments. This staff rotation model turned out not to be very suitable for the slower activities of a self-funded scientific niche journal with a longer activity planning span.

NAD will continue to be published by the NVC and continue to be part of the Nordic cooperation and the staff of the NVC-Helsinki office. The journal plays an important role in Nordic research cooperation, especially in the organisation of the Nordic Alcohol and Drug Researchers’ Assembly (NADRA), where it has been part of the programme committee and arranged an annual publishing workshop. The research unit, where it is situated at the university, called the Centre for Research on Addiction Control and Governance (CEACG), receives its base funding through a cooperation contract with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), a former co-publisher of the journal. So, the working environment is both old and new.

The popular scientific online journal PopNAD will continue to publish news and popular versions from this field of research, accessible in all Scandinavian languages, Finnish and English. This web service is led by editor Malin Wikström.

In the last couple of years, the journal has seen a steady rise in spread and accessibility: In October 2019, full-text downloads had increased by 37% compared with the previous year. Hopefully the newly established cooperation between the University of Helsinki and the journal will help strengthen further our editorial team and our everyday editorial work.

Services, lifestyles and use rituals

In this issue, Kerstin Stenius and Jessica Storbjörk (2020) analyse recent procurement regulations in four Nordic countries from the viewpoint of addiction treatment. This topic has previously been neglected in research, even though public procurement is one of the most important instruments for influencing the quality and assignation of services. The authors describe the implementation of procurement in this field as a domain of struggle between market and welfare logics (Stenius & Storbjörk, 2020).

In their article, Anne Koponen and colleagues (2020) use longitudinal methods to provide data on the impact of prenatal substance exposure on health outcomes. Based on linkage of different registries, the authors are able to discern and describe a cohort, which will contribute to increased knowledge of a vulnerable population into adulthood.

Research on health among expecting parents tends to focus on women. Elisabeth Elisabeth Lobben Munch, Svetlana Skurtveit, Marte Handal, and Eva Skovlund (2020) note that lifestyle affects sperm development, which in turn can have an impact on foetal development. In their survey study, Munch and colleagues examine lifestyle factors among expectant fathers who reported cannabis and cocaine use in the months before conception (Munch et al., 2020).

Robert Grahn, Mojgan Padyab, and Lena Lundgren found that receiving mandated institutional care as a child was strongly associated with repeated compulsory care for substance use problems as an adult. This goes against the prevailing thinking that receiving services as a child will mediate against the consequences of risky childhood conditions (Grahn et al., 2020). In their qualitative study, Bengt Svensson, Torkel Richert, and Björn Johnson examine parents’ experiences of abuse from their adult children with drug problems; a category of abuse victims that is often neglected (Svensson et al., 2020).

The rules and rituals in a drug scene can provide members with emotional energy and a sense of belonging. The ethnographic study by Trond Grønnestad, Hildegunn Sagvaag, and Philip Lalander explore how these interaction rituals also make it hard to leave the drug scene, and why those who manage to leave often return (Grønnestad et al., 2020).