Table 1. How and why we should strive for fairness in academic publication on behalf of a variety of stakeholders.

Stakeholder	Aspirations and rationale for fairness in academic publishing
Authors	• Reducing delays in publication to advance progress of individuals, teams, and the global scientific community; • Relaxing stringent formatting requirements to make the process less restrictive, onerous and time-consuming; • Optimizing peer review (e.g. open access reviewers, ensuring reviewers have appropriate expertise, minimising delay); • Providing open access portals, allowing work to be disseminated, used and cited widely; • Embracing diversity of output, including encouraging publication of negative results, experimental protocols, and unfinished datasets; • Reducing barriers to researchers in resource-limited settings; • Optimizing communication with publishers to make the process collaborative and efficient, and to drive ongoing improvements.
Publishers	• Representing publishers as an essential component of the process of data dissemination, and recognizing their role as a major driver for innovation; • Enhancing dialogue around cost; making data dissemination cost-effective while maintaining the viability of publishing businesses; • Developing a wider repertoire of output in order to meet the requirements of academia; • Optimizing communication with academia to make the process collaborative and efficient, and to drive ongoing improvements; • Identifying ‘predatory’ journals as harmful, and removing these from the academic record.
Funders and academic institutions	• Providing full and timely recognition of scientific output hosted or funded by specific agencies; • Developing opportunities for repositories of work produced by their researchers; • Providing feedback to stakeholders and investors; • Enhancing potential for collaboration; • Driving opportunities for innovation and translational output.
Reviewers	• Ensuring that reviewers have sufficient and appropriate expertise; • Providing formal credit and recognition of the contribution of reviewers.
Patients	• Acknowledging and rewarding the commitment and altruism of patients who enroll in clinical research; • Making results and conclusions of scientific research available to patients, their health- care teams, and those who allocate resources; • Avoiding harm through suppression of negative results.
Public	• Assuring accountability of public money; • Engaging and educating the public about science; • Adding to the resources available to educational institutions; • Making data available to other relevant agencies (e.g. the government, the media, economists, biotechnology).