Library Professional Publishing in Times of Regional Conflict

When missiles strike infrastructure and internet blackouts silence entire nations, the professional journals and magazines that sustain librarianship face a challenge that cuts to the profession’s core: how can scholarly communication continue when the systems that support it are under active assault?

The answer emerging from the most conflict-affected publishing communities of the 2020s is instructive: professional publishing does continue — and the conditions of conflict have, in some cases, accelerated structural changes that peacetime inertia had delayed.

The Ukraine Model: Open Access Born of Necessity

Top 10 publishers of distribution research output produced by Ukrainian researchers and open access subtypes provided by them.

The Ukrainian experience during the ongoing war with Russia provides the most fully documented contemporary case study of academic and professional publishing under sustained conflict. In January 2026, eighteen Ukrainian publishing professionals traveled to Oxford for a week-long professional development course hosted at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing and Journalism at Oxford Brookes University, organized in partnership with Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and SUPRR (Supporting Ukrainian Publishing Resilience and Recovery) [1, 2]. The program was sponsored by Taylor & Francis, Oxford University Press, and Springer, with travel and visa costs covered by industry donors [2].

What the Ukrainian delegation revealed was a publishing landscape shaped fundamentally by the demands of operating under conflict conditions. According to data presented during the Oxford program, 95% of Ukraine’s top-journal output is already open access — a figure that, by comparison, the major international publishers would take an estimated 70 more years to match at current transition rates [1]. Researchers from MIT Press have documented that, during 2012–2021, 71.5% of all Ukrainian scholarly articles were openly available, with 60.9% of open-access papers disseminated through national journals [3].

The conflict has also introduced a dimension unique to information science: the weaponization of bibliographic infrastructure itself. Publications operating in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories have been found to use the ISSN identifiers of Ukrainian journals originally founded by displaced institutions, or to register new ISSNs while falsely claiming legal succession from legitimate Ukrainian publications [4, 5]. Clarivate, which operates the Web of Science indexing service, announced it has not accepted new journal submissions from Russia or Belarus since 2022 [6]. Following negotiations initiated by SUPRR and Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science, the ISSN International Centre implemented a technical solution in 2025 that enables readers to distinguish original Ukrainian journals from unauthorized versions operating in the occupied territories [4, 7].

Iran: Structural Isolation and Local Innovation

The situation in Iran illustrates a related but distinct dynamic — what happens to professional publishing when a country is subjected to prolonged structural isolation rather than acute territorial conflict. A comprehensive 2026 analysis published in Learned Publishing identified 3,250 active journals in Iran’s publishing ecosystem across three languages: Persian, English, and Arabic [8]. Of these, 99.2% are open access [8].

Geopolitical sanctions have directly shaped Iran’s publishing infrastructure. Restricted access to international platforms — including standard DOI registration systems — prompted the development of the Domestic Object Recognizer (DOR), a nationally developed alternative identifier system [8]. The indexation gap between Persian- and English-language Iranian journals is pronounced: 30.4% of English-language Iranian journals are indexed in Scopus, compared with only 1.8% of Persian-language journals [8].

The intersection of sanctions and journal peer review has also created friction for international publishers. Under U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations, American editors and reviewers are prohibited from handling manuscripts in which authors are employed by the Government of Iran — a policy that has affected the operations of major publishers, including Elsevier [9]. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has responded by affirming that editorial decisions should not be determined by the policies of governments or other agencies outside the journal itself [10].

On 28 February 2026, the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran targeting military infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and security forces, including the IRGC. House of Commons Library Iran responded with an internet shutdown during the preceding period of domestic protest, cutting off access to digital publishing platforms and communication systems [11].

The Open Access Imperative

In both the Ukrainian and Iranian cases, paywalled content has proven a structural vulnerability during conflict. When institutional subscriptions lapse due to budget cuts or

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.2043

when researchers lose access to their institutional VPNs due to displacement, subscription-gated articles effectively cease to exist for the communities that need them most. Ukraine’s publishing community has arrived at near-universal open access not as a policy achievement but as a practical adaptation to persistent resource constraints [3].

A Publishing System Under Pressure

The professional library publishing ecosystem — journals, magazines, and trade publications that sustain librarianship as a discipline — faces specific challenges in conflict regions that differ from those confronting scientific publishing more broadly. Library infrastructure is itself a target of conflict; over 78 Ukrainian institutions of higher and professional education were relocated to government-controlled territories, 300 were completely destroyed, and 3,000 were damaged The Scholarly Kitchen since the occupation of Ukrainian territories began in 2014. The institutions that house library schools, publish library science journals, and train future librarians are among those affected.

The record being built by Ukraine’s publishing community — maintaining continuity, adapting infrastructure, and establishing international partnerships even under bombardment — represents a documented case study that the global library and information science publishing community will be drawing on for years to come.

Sources

[1] Pinter, F. “In spite of war Ukrainian academic publishing leads.” LSE Impact Blog, London School of Economics, 23 February 2026. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2026/02/23/in-spite-of-war-ukrainian-academic-publishing-leads/

[2] Taylor & Francis Newsroom. “Oxford Brookes University hosts development programme to support Ukraine’s academic publishing sector.” 19 January 2026. https://newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/development-programme-to-support-ukraines-academic-publishing-sector/

[3] Borysova, N., et al. “Open access in Ukraine: Characteristics and evolution from 2012 to 2021.” Quantitative Science Studies, MIT Press, vol. 5, no. 4, 2024, pp. 1022–1044. https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/5/4/1022/124231/

[4] Izarova, I., and D. Kurbatov. “Challenges in Academic Publishing Amid War: ISSN Issues in Ukraine Threaten Research Integrity.” Guest post, The Scholarly Kitchen, Society for Scholarly Publishing, 25 February 2025. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/02/25/guest-post-challenges-in-academic-publishing-amid-war-issn-issues-in-ukraine-threaten-research-integrity/

[5] Plastun, O., I. Makarenko, and T. Berger-Hrynova. “Stolen Ukrainian universities: An invisible Russian weapon.” Problems and Perspectives in Management, vol. 23, no. 2 (special issue), 2025. https://www.businessperspectives.org/index.php/journals/problems-and-perspectives-in-management/issue-2-spec-issue-4/stolen-ukrainian-universities-an-invisible-russian-weapon

[6] “Major journals ‘publishing papers from Russian-controlled Ukraine’.” Research Professional News, 21 March 2025. https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-world-2025-3-major-journals-publishing-papers-from-russian-controlled-ukraine/

[7] Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (NAUKA). “Changes Introduced to ISSN Assignment Rules: Ukraine Initiates Protection of Scientific Journals from Unlawful Use in Occupied Territories.” 2025. https://nauka.gov.ua/en/news/changes-introduced-to-issn-assignment-rules-ukraine-initiates-protection-of-scientific-journals-from-unlawful-use-in-occupied-territories/

[8] Jamali, H. R., et al. “Multilingual Scholarly Journal Publishing in Iran.” Learned Publishing, Wiley, 26 January 2026. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.2043

[9] “Scientific Journals Adapt to New U.S. Trade Sanctions on Iran.” Science (ScienceInsider), AAAS. https://www.science.org/content/article/scientific-journals-adapt-new-us-trade-sanctions-iran

[10] Saeidnia, S., and M. Abdollahi. “Consequences of International Sanctions on Iranian Scientists and the Basis of Science.” Hepatitis Monthly, vol. 13, no. 9, 2013, e14843. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3830517/

[11] Council of the European Union Library. “A library guide on Iran.” March 2026. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/documents-publications/library/library-blog/posts/a-library-guide-on-iran/

[12] House of Commons Library. “Iran in 2026.” UK Parliament, March 2026. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/iran-in-2026/