Journal of Science Policy & Governance | Volume 18, Issue 01 | March 24, 2021
|
Op-Ed: Toward a Sustainable Model of Scientific Publishing
Keywords: scientific societies; publishing grants; open-access; impact factor; publication; community
Executive Summary: The current models of commercial publishing of scientific research costs universities, funding organizations, and governments billions of dollars in the form of annual subscriptions and publishing charges. Yet, many research papers are behind a paywall for the public and those unaffiliated to universities. Much of the research that is freely accessible to everyone requires authors to pay an unreasonable fee leading to inequalities in knowledge dissemination based on affordability. So, we need a sustainable model of scientific publishing that is beneficial to scientists, universities, and the public, especially in light of Covid-19 pandemic related budget cuts. Similar to commercial publishers, many scientific societies publish their own journals. Funding sources and universities should offer publishing grants or annual contributions to fund such societies’ open-access journals and thus support a sustainable publishing model wherein profits generated from academic publishing are invested back into the scientific community. Funding sources should also mandate publishing papers in society journals. To encourage that, hiring committees should place more importance on the article-level metrics than journal quality metrics such as the impact factor. The societies can use the publishing grants to cover journal publication costs and pay commercial publishers only for their value-added services such as manuscript handling and hosting the content online. The proposed publishing model will be sustainable and can strengthen scientific communities by supporting scientific society journals and making science more accessible.
-Read the full article through download.- |
References
- Banks, Marcus A., and Robert Dellavalle. 2008. “Emerging Alternatives to the Impact Factor.” OCLC Systems and Services 24 (3): 167–73. https://doi.org/10.1108/10650750810898200.
- Brembs, Björn. 2016. “How Gold Open Access May Make Things Worse.” Björn.Brembs.Blog. 2016. Accessed Feb 10, 2021 http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/04/how-gold-open-access-may-make-things-worse/.
- Brembs, Björn. 2018. “Prestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Average Reliability.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 12: 37. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00037.
- Brembs, Björn, Katherine Button, and Marcus Munafò. 2013. “Deep Impact: Unintended Consequences of Journal Rank.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7: 291. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291.
- Else, Holly. 2020. “Nature Journals Reveal Terms of Open-Access Option” Nature News. 588: 19–20. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03324-y
- “Elsevier Agreements.” 2021. Elsevier. Accessed Feb 10, 2021. https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/agreements
- Garfield, Eugene. 2006. “The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor.” JAMA 295 (1): 90–93. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.295.1.90.
- Grossmann, Alexander, and Björn Brembs. 2019. “Assessing the Size of the Affordability Problem in Scholarly Publishing.” Preprint. PeerJ Preprints. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27809v1.
- Hutchins, B. Ian, Xin Yuan, James M. Anderson, and George M. Santangelo. 2016. “Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A New Metric That Uses Citation Rates to Measure Influence at the Article Level.” PLoS Biology 14 (9): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002541.
- Johnson, Rob, Anthony Watkinson, and Michael Mabe. 2018. “An Overview of Scientifc and Scholarly Publishing.” The STM Report. https://www.stm-assoc.org/2018_10_04_STM_Report_2018.pdf.
- Johnston, Mark. 2017. “Scientific Society Journals: By Scientists for Science.” Genetics 207 (4): 1229-1230 https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.117.300427.
- McKiernan, Erin C., Lesley A. Schimanski, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Lisa Matthias, Meredith T. Niles, and Juan P. Alperin. 2019. “Use of the Journal Impact Factor in Academic Review, Promotion, and Tenure Evaluations.” ELife 8: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47338.
- “Open Access Publishing Price List.” 2021. Elsevier. Accessed Feb 10, 2021 https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals/journal-pricing/print-price-list.
- “RELX Annual Report.” 2019. Accessed Feb 10, 2021. https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/2019-annual-report.pdf.
- Schloss, Patrick D., Mark Johnston, and Arturo Casadevall. 2017. “Support Science by Publishing in Scientific Society Journals.” MBio 8 (5): e01633-17. https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01633-17.
- Shen, Cenyu, and Bo-Christer Björk. 2015. “‘Predatory’ Open Access: A Longitudinal Study of Article Volumes and Market Characteristics.” BMC Medicine 13 (1): 230. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2
Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi is a post-doctoral research associate at Florida International University. Ravindra received his Ph.D. from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He studies insect vision, flight, and navigation.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all the instructors and organizers of the Science Policy and Advocacy Certificate Program for STEM Scientists (UC-Irvine/JSPG). Thanks to Max Schneider and Ankita Arora for their feedback on earlier drafts of the article.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all the instructors and organizers of the Science Policy and Advocacy Certificate Program for STEM Scientists (UC-Irvine/JSPG). Thanks to Max Schneider and Ankita Arora for their feedback on earlier drafts of the article.
DISCLAIMER: The findings and conclusions published herein are solely attributed to the author and not necessarily endorsed or adopted by the Journal of Science Policy and Governance. Articles are distributed in compliance with copyright and trademark agreements.
ISSN 2372-2193
ISSN 2372-2193