Stealing the Master’s Tools: A Skunkworks for Anti-Racist and Democratic Open Access Publishing.

In a decolonial project to disrupt traditional paradigms of academic publishing, a collaborative initiative was forged between a group of health inequalities researchers. With the support of King’s College London, Libraries & Collections, this synergy birthed ‘Stolen Tools’, a pioneering open-access journal providing a platform for voices historically relegated to the periphery of academic discourse.

Unlike conventional publishing frameworks that primarily evaluate a manuscript’s content before acceptance, this model adopts a proactive stance by accepting authors of colour at the ideation stage. It augments their scholarly journey by pairing them with seasoned academic mentors – termed ‘critical friends’. This symbiotic relationship nurtures innovative academic research. Central to this initiative is a decolonial ethos aimed at dismantling the ivory tower’s barriers that have hindered many potential authors from contributing to the academic discourse.

This model envisions a more inclusive, anti-racist, and democratic academic publishing landscape whereby diverse narratives and epistemologies are accorded a rightful place within academic scholarship. This talk outlines their journey so far, how the journal team and King’s Libraries & Collections have worked together and their plans for a crowd sourcing solidarity sponsorship model.