How traditional publishing hurts scientific progress
March 22, 2012 | Source: Wired Science
(Credit: Johan Larsson/Flickr)
A battle that has raged for over a decade between advocates of open science and publishers of traditional scientific journals is coming to a head, says Michael Eisen, co-founder of the open access publisher Public Library of Science.
Eighty five percent of published papers remain locked behind subscription pay walls, accessible only to those affiliated with universities and other large research institutions.
But new journals that make everything they publish freely available are growing rapidly. And government efforts to make the results of all publicly funded scientific and medical research accessible to everyone are expanding, despite industry-backed legislative efforts to end them.
Traditional scientific publishing also retards scientific progress. To build a system of scientific publishing that optimally serves researchers, health care workers, teachers and the public, we have to sever the acts of publication and assessment.
Research works should be made available to scientists and the public as soon as they are finished — following an initial screen to ensure they are legitimate works of science. The same volunteer reviewers and editors would decide how important they are, and to whom they are important, but they would do so alongside and after — rather than before — publication.
There will be some false starts and a bit of chaos. And we will have to give up some deeply ingrained ideas and practices. But in the last century scientists wiped out viruses like smallpox and polio, landed people on the moon and sequenced the human genome. Surely we can build a system for communicating and assessing our ideas and discoveries that actually adds value.
Comments (5)
by Giulio Prisco
@Mike, I totally agree. I think a good idea would be to create a value added, open peer review layer for arXiv, with reputation and “karma” points to motivate reviewers. The papers with most positive evaluations, stars and upvotes would be featured more prominently than others in the user interface, front pages and search results. I think the Stack Exchange http://stackexchange.com/ software platform could be easily adapted.
by Mike
As I see it, there are 5 traditions in scholarly publishing that no longer make any sense and need to die:
1- Evaluation precedes publication. We should be able to publish first and get reviews and endorsements later. Science is now moving too quickly for that old model to make any sense.
2- The publisher is responsible to review/endorse the paper. These are separate tasks that need not be coupled, and create a conflict of interest anyway. We should be able to publish immediately and get reviews and endorsements later, and from different organizations.
3- Publications are accepted or rejected as a binary evaluation. Once upon a time this made sense in order to filter out all the garbage. Now, however, no one has time to read everything that credible journals publish. Instead, we use search engines to find papers that are both credible and relevant. In this newer model, it makes more sense for credibility to be evaluated as a continuous value, rather than a binary value. Frankly, some good papers are better than other good papers. Perhaps it should even be a multi-dimensional value.
4- Publishers expect us to be exclusive. We should be able to publish in multiple places, and receive reviews and endorsements from multiple places. Being exclusive has no value for the author/researcher, and it is time for the publishers to start bending for them.
5- Publication often requires copyright transfer. Journals claim they need the copyright to protect their legal posteriors, but this is a lie to support their dying business model. Requiring papers to use an open license would cover them just as well (and would be compatible with #4).
I think the biggest reason we are not making progress is that these five issues are all somewhat intertwined. To some extent, they all need to be fixed at the same time, and that’s a pretty-big paradigm shift for everyone involved.
by Sean D
Why don’t scientists start a website where significant works and publications, which are typically behind a pay-wall, host pirated files where anyone can share the works?
by Pauldenice
Have I felt frustrated wen I would find mentioned on my Internet search, a paper or a chapter in a book that corresponded quite perfectly to my own interest for writing a paper or making a comment on a blog or a forum,
Then discovering that in order to have access to it, not only would it cost me more than going to the next availlable press agent or book store buying the whole magazine or book, but also that it would only be available to my reading for 24 or 48 hours.: how horrible,for a person who believes that knowledge can only increase when it is shared, hence being tested by millions or people accessing it, Tested in the Karl Popper sense of “refutation”
Since I am doing my research as a private person, not part of any business or academic organizations, or laboratory, I can’t subscribe to all the publications that may have a content that could be of potential use to my research(es) in various fields since I am curious to know things in several domains…
Having to subscribe to many publications defeats the purpose of having access to well targeted knowledge through the Internet.
Although browsing along in book shops and libraries often leads to unexpected finds, beyond pure logical search using any search engine… But that’s a very different point.
On the other direction having one’s research published is often quite difficult, especially since, as I said earlier, I don’t belong to a research lab or a University faculty.
Fortunately I have been able to publish on my website and in various blogs some of my own researches…
Paul
Paul
by Bruce
We need an global open source IP Databank to unleash scientific progress and understanding. The publication issue is part of a problem that includes a patent process which allows private interests to usurp and claim ownership of publicly funded research and naturally occurring phenomena.