Hello fellow journalologists,
When I created this newsletter I had an audience of editors in mind. However, most of the readers of this newsletter work with editors, and are not editors themselves, so I’ve widened the inclusion criteria to include snippets from the wider publishing industry. What follows is by no means comprehensive; I’ve included a few company press releases, but I’ve excluded the majority. As always, the goal is to surface content that’s interesting and informative. Perhaps it’s too much? Feedback is always welcome (james@journalology.com).
I’ve annotated a few of the stories with comments of my own. Look for “JB” beneath the snippet.
News
Prior to Bauchner’s split with the AMA, base compensation for the editor in chief totaled $956,000 in 2020, plus a $50,000 bonus. In addition to his separation payments, Bauchner earned an additional $582,000 from base pay in 2021, plus $16,000 in unspecified, but still taxable compensation. The AMA’s filings with the IRS do not specify the exact terms of its agreement with Bauchner, and so it is unclear if he was owed additional separation payments in the years after 2021.
Chronicle of Higher Education (Dan Bauman; paywall)
JB: In case you’re wondering, The New England Journal of Medicine’s Form 990 data can be found here.
In its conclusions, the Council calls on the Commission and the member states to support policies towards a scholarly publishing model that is not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with no costs for authors or readers. Some Member States have introduced secondary publication rights into their national copyright legislation, enabling open access to scholarly publications which involve public funds. The Council encourages national open access policies and guidelines to make scholarly publications immediately openly accessible under open licences.
Council of the EU (press release)
Related:
JB: The Clarke & Esposito team will be providing our view on this story in the next issue of The Brief, which should arrive in inboxes next week. Subscribe now (free to sign up).
ScholarAI is a plugin designed to provide users with access to a database of peer-reviewed articles and academic research. Currently, ScholarAI connects the LLMs that power ChatGPT with tailored access to open access Springer-Nature articles. By using this plugin, users quickly gain an ability to directly query relevant peer-reviewed studies to find reliable information to help facilitate their scientific research, technical projects, and funding proposals. Critically, ScholarAI helps limit hallucinations that may occur during normal ChatGPT use and provides hyperlinks directly to source material to ensure you are provided with the most accurate and trustworthy data from the academic sphere.
Culture and Growth Substack (Shashi Mudunuri)
Follow up article: ScholarAI: How can I use it?
Scientists who have attended meetings are more likely to cite work discussed in talks they could see in person, compared with results described in sessions that they could not attend. That citation bump from in-person attendance accrues even for talks that conference attendees hadn’t planned on listening to. Attending a talk is “really, really effective” for increasing the chance that researchers will cite the work, says study co-author Misha Teplitskiy, an information scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The study was posted on the arXiv preprint server on 5 May. It has not yet been peer reviewed.
Nature (Katharine Sanderson)
Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.01175
JB: Many years ago, when I was an editor at The Lancet, I compared the citations to articles that were published on the same day as a conference presentation with ‘normal’ articles. Issuing a call for papers well in advance of a scientific conference and publishing the results of the submitted randomised controlled trial at exactly the moment that the principal investigator stepped up onto the podium was a successful strategy. This preprint does not surprise me at all.
Publishers using EM will be provided with recommendations for Reviewer candidates through Prophy’s extensive database of over 60 million researchers, drawn from a collection of over 150 million articles. Prophy’s Referee Finder tool automatically creates a Reviewer profile and ranks each Reviewer according to their semantic similarities to a reviewed manuscript or proposal. This integration allows Editors to quickly surface and connect with the most relevant and available Reviewers. Moreover, it enables Editors to diversify their Reviewer pool and identify early career researchers. Once a Reviewer is selected, automated invitations can be sent directly from EM without any disruptions to workflows.
Aries Systems press release
COUNTER R5 allows publishers and authors to measure the impact of their research and ensure their usage data is consistent and reliable. It provides item metrics, trend data, and open access usage. This includes:
- displaying human views and downloads on public pages, which excludes bots by applying newer standard of Counter 5.02 (2023+) software. This might result in a decrease of 17% for views and 12% for downloads, but will make it more precise, reliable, and industry compliant.
- displaying geolocation data, which verifies where views and downloads are coming from. It will be consistent with the dynamic counter views and downloads for all article pages, RT pages, and researcher profile pages.
Frontiers press release
JB: COUNTER was initially developed to help libraries compare usage of subscription journals across multiple publishers. It’s great to see fully OA publishers, like Frontiers, are adopting COUNTER. One reason that citations and impact factors have been used so heavily to measure academic performance is because there’s no central database of usage across journals and publishers. I would love to see an aggregated view of COUNTER compliant usage data, ideally alongside the journals’ APC so that the cost per download (APC price divided by usage over a specified time period) could be compared.
Opinion
However, it appears that publisher type, rather than journal type, is a better predictor of journal size. Whatever the journal’s economics – and whether the organization is for profit or not – it seems that Mixed Model publishers continue to publish fully OA journals of similar sizes to their other journal types. OA Only publishers have historically published slightly larger journals, but the size of their journals has really taken off over the last decade. It appears that Mixed Model publishers continue apply their tried and trusted subscription thinking to their fully OA journals. This means that they need to create more and more journals to keep up with demand, with all the overhead that implies. Meanwhile, the new kids on the block have no such qualms. Why publish more journals when you can simply publish more stuff?
Delta Think (Dan Pollock and Ann Michael)
JB: This is a must read for all publishers, even though the data are unsurprising given the recent dramatic increase in output in articles from Frontiers and MDPI in particular.
Currently, a lot about the “not-for-profit” versus “for-profit” proxy remains implied. I recommend we work on making these values explicit in our discourse. I want generative models, not exploitative models, regardless of their profit motives. I want equitable models, regardless of their profit motives. Stereotyping based on their profit status is not going to help articulate our values for us.
Chris Hartgerink’s blog
JB: The idea that “not-for-profit” makes a journal morally superior in some way is tenuous and it’s good to see this topic being aired here. It’s very easy to create a not-for-profit journal: simply spend lots of cash on trendy marketing agencies and lavish hotels and, voila, you have a journal that makes no profit!
The OSTP policy has the potential to increase inequity in science. Scientists will be forced into a pay-to-publish model. For some researchers with substantial funds, this will be manageable; however, many researchers will find these fees prohibitive. When funds are not available, publishing completed work might be delayed, hindering the dissemination of new knowledge. This potential outcome is exactly the opposite of the desired OSTP policy goal. Moreover, junior scientists, who often have limited funds, will be impacted more than established senior scientists. Researchers from countries with more limited resources will not have a chance to publish in prestigious journals that were forced by the new policy to switch from a subscription to a Gold Open Access model.
ACR Open Rheumatology (Amr H. Sawalha et al)
To help realize SSP’s goal of “Providing equitable opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds to feel welcome to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the scholarly publishing community”, a liaison program was started in 2021 to embed DEIA committee members into all SSP committees. As of 2022, we have liaisons in each one of eleven committees and one task force, who have provided feedback and consultation on a number of different initiatives from the annual meeting, to career development, finance, and awards and nominations to make them more inclusive and accessible.
The Scholarly Kitchen (Rebecca Kirk, Allison Leung and Shaina Lange)
The Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) is launching a new initiative, the C4DISC Community of Practice (COP), to provide a virtual space for peer-to-peer learning regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in scholarly communications. For those with a dedicated role or a personal interest in spreading DEIA values, and whether they are acting in a paid role or as a volunteer, the COP venue offers a space for discussion of issues related to DEIA in your organizations. The purpose is to share knowledge and provide ideas and potential solutions to take back to the organizations that each of us represents or influences. C4DISC envisions the COP as a venue for building trusted connections and providing knowledge-sharing opportunities for organizations about their DEIA work.
Science Editor (Patricia Baskin)
Recently, I participated in a large online editors’ conference attended by Taylor and Francis journal editors from many disciplines and many countries. When we were asked about our most troubling issues, finding reviewers was the number # 1 problem. Refusals are at an all-time high. Some editors reported asking as many as 10 reviewers before finding one who agreed to conduct the manuscript review—and of course more than one is required by most journals.
Issues in Mental Health Nursing (Sandra Thomas)
The focus of our research is on identifying and developing innovative solutions that can make peer review easier for reviewers to complete while ensuring the quality of reviews meets or exceeds established standards. Specifically, we aim to design a writing assistant that can help junior reviewers write high-quality reviews without struggling with review structure and tone. Research has shown that junior reviewers tend to be harsher and produce lower-quality reviews, making a writing assistant particularly helpful for them. For senior reviewers who have busy work schedules, we hope the writing assistant can also help them complete review tasks efficiently to save them time.
UCL workshop summary (Shiping Chen, Duncan Brumby, Anna Cox)
Distrust does mention pre-registration as a possible countermeasure: committing to a specific analysis plan in advance of data collection. But Smith argues that “relatively few journals currently require pre-registration — perhaps because it is so easy to game the system: collect the data, torture or mine the data to obtain interesting results, and then file a pre-plan that does not reveal that the study has already been completed.” However, many reputable medical journals effectively require pre-registration for publishing clinical trials. Although scientists can circumvent the rules, doing so would be outright fraud. Researchers who stoop that low might as well just make up the data from scratch.
Nature (Eric-Jan Wagenmakers)
Some critics argue that global health can never solve inequity. Some go further and suggest that global health is structurally racist. It is hard to disagree with these conclusions. Although global health journals might mean well, the operation of waiver policies for article processing charges has created a culture of humiliation for scientists who cannot afford western journal open access fees. Journals have worsened Northern ventriloquism, where scientists from lower-income settings feel forced to adhere to high-income norms and standards to be permitted to publish in their pages.
The Lancet (Richard Horton)
Currently, journals are classified using various taxonomies and are siloed in many systems, such as library databases or software for publishers. Providing a service that can automatically classify a text (and provide a measure of accuracy!) outside of a specific system can democratize access to this information across all systems. Crossref infrastructure enables a range of services for the research community; we have a wealth of metadata created by a very large global community. We wondered how we could contribute in this area.
Upstream (Esha Datta)
Journal club
One of the main factors that attracts authors to choose a journal is the time interval between submission and publication, which varies between journals and subject matter. Here, we evaluated the time intervals between submission and publication according to journal impact factor and continent of author’s affiliation, considering articles with authors from single or multiple continents. Altogether, 72 journals indexed in the Web of Science database within the subject matter “Genetics and Heredity”, divided by impact factor into four quartiles and randomly selected were analyzed for time intervals from article submission to publication. Data from a total of 46,349 articles published from 2016 to 2020 were collected and analyzed considering the following time intervals: submission to acceptance (SA), acceptance to publication (AP) and submission to publication (SP).
PLOS ONE (Rafael Leal Zimmer et al)
Ukrainian editors continued their work despite severe psychological difficulties and financial dependency. The editors expect greater support from the international community and suggestions on practical strategies to deal with the challenges without significant losses. Continuing surveys to identify problems arising from the changing conditions were also recommended.
European Science Editing (Maryna Zhenchenko, Iryna Izarova, Yulia Baklazhenko)
Given the impact of China’s growing presence on editors, publishers and non-Chinese authors seeking to publish in the same journals, it is important to understand the reasons, directions and outcomes of these changes, their effect on Chinese scholars and local Chinese journals, and where they might be leading. In this review paper I explore the rise of Chinese scholarship, its influence on global publishing and on Chinese scholars, and how the Chinese government is responding to its new role in global academic publishing.
Learned Publishing (Ken Hyland)
JB: This is well worth reading as a prelude to an in-depth report that Clarke & Esposito is about to publish on the China publishing landscape. I am obviously biased, but the C&E report is the best assessment of the China market that I’ve read over the years (and I’ve read a LOT of reports on this topic). Subscribe to the next issue of The Brief to find out more.
Authors often ask how long the peer review process takes. Peer review duration has attracted much attention in academia in recent years. Existing research focuses primarily on the statistical characteristics of peer review duration, with few studies considering the potential influence of manuscripts’ attractiveness. This study aims to fill this research gap by employing attention economy theory. By analysing the peer review history of articles published in The British Medical Journal and 16 information and library science journals, we find a significant negative relationship between peer review duration and the Altmetric Attention Score. Overall, our study offers a new perspective on peer review behaviour and bridges the divide between peer reviews and altmetrics.
Journal of Information Science (paywall; Guangyao Zhang et al)
JB: “The British Medical Journal” rebranded to “BMJ” in 1988 (and then “The BMJ” in 2014), which goes to show how long it takes for journal rebranding to be fully noticed by the community.
We believe LLMs could contribute to editors’ tasks in peer review by supporting the search for suitable reviewers, the initial screening of manuscripts, and the write-up of final decision letters from individual review reports. Using LLMs could help editors to tackle one of their major challenges, i.e., reviewer shortage and the time-consuming task of identifying and inviting potential reviewers. Editors struggle to find sufficiently qualified reviewers and maintain reasonable turnaround times for their journals. Since LLMs can support reviewers to write better reviews and submit their report more quickly, editors would likely have access to a larger and potentially more diverse and efficient pool of candidate reviewers.
Research Integrity and Peer Review (Mohammad Hosseini & Serge P. J. M. Horbach)
Open access publishing has quite a significant cost associated with it. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are fees charged by publishers to authors for the publication of their articles in open access journals. These fees can present a new type of “paywall” to researchers and institutions who cannot afford to pay these amounts. Considering previous studies that showed barriers to publishing open access between countries as a result of high costs, in this study, we aimed to examine whether there are differences in open access publishing, expenditure and overall participation within universities in the United States. Our analysis shows that the majority of states published between 1,000 – 7,000 Gold Open Access publications and spent up to 6million dollars in the past 10 years. However, there are some noteworthy outliers’ states that publish a high number Gold Open Access papers but pay significantly less than other states that publish a lower number of Gold Open Access papers and pay significantly more.
Abstract for 27th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (Gali Halevi et al)
We found that 79.9% of COVID-19 research papers published between January 2020 and December 2021 was open access, with 39.0% published with gold open access licenses. In contrast, just 55.7% of SDG papers were open access in the same time period, with only 36.0% published with gold open access licenses. Papers related to the climate emergency overall had the second-lowest level of open access at just 55.5%. Papers published by the largest for-profit publishers that committed to both the SDG Publishers Compact and climate actions were not predominantly published open access. The paper highlights the need for continued efforts to promote open access publishing to facilitate scientific research and technological development to address global challenges.
bioRxiv (Vincent Larivière, Isabel Basson, Jocalyn P. Clark)
Through engagement with and coverage of open research outputs, journalists can help align the ideals of openness, transparency, and accountability with the wider public sphere and its democratic potential. Yet, it is unclear to what degree journalists use open research outputs in their reporting, what factors motivate or constrain this use, and how the recent surge in openly available research seen during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the relationship between open science and science journalism. This literature review thus examines journalists’ use of open research outputs, specifically open access publications and preprints. We focus on literature published from 2018 onwards—particularly literature relating to the COVID-19 pandemic—but also include seminal articles outside the search dates. We find that, despite journalists’ potential to act as critical brokers of open access knowledge, their use of open research outputs is hampered by an overreliance on traditional criteria for evaluating scientific quality; concerns about the trustworthiness of open research outputs; and challenges using and verifying the findings.
F1000Research (Alice Fleerackers et al)
And finally…
Thanks for reading to the end. Please let me know if you like (or dislike) the new format of this newsletter. You can reach me via james@journalology.com.
Until next time,
James