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Journalology

Journalology #30: Amplify

Published about 2 years ago • 11 min read

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Hello fellow journalologists,

Many of you will have been at the SSP annual conference this week. I would have liked to have been there too, but Portland is a LONG way away from Liverpool and it just wasn’t feasible this year.

The C&E team published the May issue of The Brief a few days ago. I wrote the first draft of the lead story on Diamond OA; I can’t take credit for the opening line, though — that one was David Crotty’s.

There's been a lot of coverage of the story in the media, much of it overblown. The best news article, by a long shot, appeared in Nature, which provided balanced coverage.

There’s a part of me that likes the idea of a Diamond OA utopia, but I struggle to see how it could be implemented in practice without a huge investment (in the region of hundreds of millions of Euro). Regardless, it’s likely that the reverberations of this new development will be felt for many years to come.

Yesterday, I gave a presentation at EASE (European Association of Science Editors) on “How to build an influential journal”. It was impossible to do the topic justice in 12 minutes, but I tried to give an overview of the characteristics of influential journals. I often describe the three core functions of journals as:

(1) Filter

(2) Enhance

(3) Amplify

‘Amplify’ is probably the most important for influential journals.

In that regard, here are some extracts from a summary of an Against The Grain podcast featuring Elliot Lumb, who created PeerRef.

Elliot’s initial idea for PeerRef was, he admits in hindsight, a bit naive, though many of its elements remain crucial to him. PeerRef, he hoped, would help the OA movement to bring the world of traditional publishing to its knees by establishing free and open alternatives to working with publishers. PeerRef would organize peer review with a broad and inclusive cadre of peer reviewers, rather than relying on the network of  particular editors.

Editors are an increasingly under-appreciated group, with some academics and funders arguing that scholarly communication would be better off without them. For example, here’s a screen grab from the Wellcome Open Research homepage, which I included in my EASE presentation (red highlight is mine):

Anyway, I digress. Back to the ATG summary article:

Yet, after a few months of talking to researchers as he launched PeerRef–rather than just OA advocates–Elliot began to see that there was more to traditional publishing than just organizing peer review and taking profits. Indeed, the more he talked to researchers the more he realized that the value proposition of traditional publishers was not in organizing peer review at all.

The process of editorial curation is a core part of ‘Filter’ and ‘Enhance’; this observation suggests that authors don't appreciate peer review (but readers do...). The following paragraph is interesting with regards to the importance of ‘Amplify’.

For Elliot, publishers mostly add value for the authors and readers after publication. Researchers made clear to him that they valued the work that publishers do in building community, curating research for readers, and making published works more accessible and discoverable. Publishers have experts in SEO (“Google is like your journal’s homepage,” he says) and accessibility and help the author to reach specific audiences, such as policymakers or clinical researchers. All of this is actually crucial for researchers.

It’s worth considering the relative importance of ‘Filter’, ‘Enhance’ and ‘Amplify’ and how those three roles might change for journals in the future. ‘Amplify’ is possibly the most important (but only for research that’s done well, obviously, which is why ‘Filter’ and ‘Enhance’ have to come first).

News

​AI intensifies fight against ‘paper mills’ that churn out fake research​

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are complicating publishers’ efforts to tackle the growing problem of paper mills — companies that produce fake scientific papers to order. Generative AI tools, including chatbots such as ChatGPT and image-generating software, provide new ways of producing paper-mill content, which could prove particularly difficult to detect. These were among the challenges discussed by research-integrity experts at a summit on 24 May, which focused on the paper-mill problem.

Nature (Layal Liverpool)

​ResearchGate and Frontiers announce partnership​

Additionally, dedicated journal profiles will be created and made accessible on the network, and each journal will be prominently represented on all of its associated articles pages on ResearchGate. This enhanced presence will help to grow the readership of these journals – as measured via COUNTER-compliant reporting – as well as increase journal visibility and engagement among the highly relevant researcher audience that is active on ResearchGate. Authors of the articles included in the partnership will see their content automatically added to their publication pages on ResearchGate, giving them access to statistics showing the impact of their work, and enabling them to connect with their readers. Additionally, researchers will be able to more easily learn about potential publishing opportunities across the included journals.

ResearchGate press release

JB: It’s interesting that a fully OA publisher is partnering with ResearchGate in this way. After all, the Frontiers content is CC BY, so ResearchGate could syndicate it without permission. The COUNTER-compliant reporting element (noted in the last newsletter) suggests that Frontiers is looking to drive usage to be able to inform customers (authors and funders) about that usage. I predict that more publishers will adopt this strategy as they try to prove value for money for APCs.

​Improving global research discoverability and visibility​

The report is free to download and explores the initial results of ScienceDirect’s pilot initiative that enables researchers to search and discover articles from five publishing partners alongside content from Elsevier journals. Since January 2022, American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Taylor & Francis, and Wiley have made selected Organic Chemistry and Transportation research articles discoverable on ScienceDirect alongside Elsevier content. IUCr Journals, published by the International Union of Crystallography, joined the initiative in August 2022.

Elsevier press release

JB: The report’s author is Rose L’Huillier, SVP for Researcher Products at Elsevier. Rose and I wrote proposals for new Lancet journals around 2005 (after I returned to the fold; Rose was a management trainee at the time). Small world. I've lost count of the number of proposals I've written for new journals over the years. I’m currently finishing off three proposals for a client (a society publisher)—please drop me a line (james@journalology.com) if you need assistance writing proposals for new journals.

​Share Your Views and Stories – The Workplace Equity Survey 2023 has launched!​

C4DISC has launched the Workplace Equity Survey 2023 to assess DEIA progress to assess how workplaces in the scholarly publishing industry have (or haven’t) changed since the first survey in 2018. We welcome your personal stories of your lived experiences and perceptions – the access or barriers to opportunity, inclusivity, and equity you are encountering.

Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications announcement

​Guest edited collections best practice​

“Best practices for guest edited collections” introduces recommendations for journals and publishers for handling collections that are edited by guest editors. The potential risks and ethical issues are highlighted, as well as a checklist for creating guest edited collections, steps to ensure collections are edited according to valid publishing practices and ethical standards, and clarification of the ethical responsibilities throughout the various stages of the process. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing discussion about the topic.

Committee on Publication Ethics (discussion document)

Opinion

​5 Things to Think About with mediastudies.press director, Jeff Pooley​

The debates we have today about our current, half-broken system are preoccupied with the present, or perhaps the near future. That’s as it should be. But it’s worth looking back at the manifestos and prognostications of earlier eras. There are lots of reasons, but the one that motivates me is to show that our current joint-custody arrangement—for-profit publishers and non-profit universities—is a recent and reversible development. It’s much easier to see that another publishing world is possible if we can see, first, how contingent and callow our current system is.

Commonplace (Jefferson Pooley)

JB: I enjoyed this essay even if I disagree with its key message. It’s worth noting that in 1929 half of the 291 US journals were owned by academic societies and 10% were owned by commercial entities (section 5 of the essay). The picture is very different now. Could history repeat itself (especially if the European Council gets its way)?

​A Guide for Social Science Journal Editors on Easing into Open Science​

Journal editors have a large amount of power to advance open science in their respective fields by incentivising and mandating open policies and practices at their journals. The Data PASS Journal Editors Discussion Interface (JEDI, an online community for social science journal editors: http://www.dpjedi.org) has collated several resources on open science in journal editing. However, it can be overwhelming as a new editor to know where to start. For this reason, we have created a guide for journal editors on how to get started with open science. The guide outlines steps that editors can take to implement open policies and practices at their journal, and goes through the what, why, how, and worries of each policy/practice.

OSF Preprints (Priya Silverstein et al)

​How Scientific Publishers’ Extreme Fees Put Profit Over Progress​

But as paywalls drop, scientists are the ones bearing the brunt of the cost. Before open access, journals profited from subscription fees. Under this system, readers either subscribed to entire journals or purchased individual articles. According to 2018 research by Duke Libraries, the average cost of a paywalled Nature article was $32. The study offered this calculation: If the 244,133 authors who cited the popular article “Cleavage of Structural Proteins” paid out-of-pocket to access it, the total revenue would be $7,821,256.

The Nation (Kayla Yup)

JB: This statistic is utter nonsense and is a perfect example of the misinformation about commercial publishers that is so prevalent. The average cost per download for a Nature article is one of the lowest in the industry (because the usage is so high). Very few people pay $32 to read an article via pay-per-view — this extrapolation makes no sense at all. I strongly suspect that if you calculated the average cost per download for a Nature article (published under the subscription model or under the OA model) and compared that figure with the average cost per download for a community journal with a $3000 APC then Nature would come out on top in terms of value for money. Why? Because Nature is exceptionally good at ‘Amplify’.

​Preprint clubs: why it takes a village to do peer review​

The Preprint Club builds on the fact that most academic institutions host journal clubs at which ECRs already spend time and energy reading and commenting on the work of others. Unfortunately, these efforts are often limited to discussing peer-reviewed manuscripts, and the analyses are rarely shared beyond the journal clubs. We harnessed this lost opportunity to repurpose our institutional journal clubs to focus on preprints that have not yet been peer reviewed, and to share our analyses publicly.

Nature (Felix Clemens Richter)

​The Intersection of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Open Access in Scholarly Publishing: A Summary from the Ecological Society of America’s Workshop on Exploring Barriers and Solutions​

This 2-day workshop brought together representatives from journals, publishers, researchers, and librarians to share experiences, discuss what is working and not working, and to identify future action steps that can advance DEI best practices in OA publishing. This workshop highlighted that underlying commitments help shape whether DEI goals, objectives, and action steps are realized or not. Presentations shared at this meeting and rich discussions offered insights into lessons learned from the field.

Science Editor (Erin Landis, Leonard Jack, Jr , and Amy King)

Journal club

​Peer reviewer training to build capacity in engineering education research​

The Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project aimed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored experiences reviewing journal manuscripts. Concurrently, the project explored how EER scholars develop capabilities for evaluating and conducting EER scholarship through peer reviewing. PERT used a mentoring structure in which two researchers with little reviewing experience were paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively.

Australasian Journal of Engineering Education (Kelsey Watts et al)

​How Reliable are Anonymous Lists in Identifying Predatory Journals and Publishers?​

In conclusion, while anonymously managed lists of predatory journals and publishers can be a helpful tool for identifying disreputable publishers, researchers and publishing professionals should be aware of their limitations and consider using them in conjunction with other sources of information. Numerous organizations have observed that such predatory lists are not fulfilling their intended purpose, but rather raising doubts about their efficacy. In a recently published article, Emanuel Kulczycki stated, "We won’t defeat predatory journals by making a list of them." Moreover, several journals identified as predatory by these anonymously managed lists are included in government-approved lists and are indexed in mainstream bibliographic databases. Consequently, these non-credible lists are attempting to exert influence over indexing databases and government-approved lists.

Trends in Scholarly Publishing (Maryam Sayab)

​Underrepresentation of Women Participants in Exercise Science and Physiology Research is Associated with Authorship: A Historical Perspective​

While the number of women authors and participants increased from 1991 to 2021, these numbers do not represent the current number of women in the population (~51%). Our data shows the historical underrepresentation of woman authors influences the low number of woman participants. Specifically, women authors included participants of both genders (men and women) at equitable numbers in exercise science and physiology research in 2021. The low representation of women as participants in exercise science and physiology research could be resolved by encouraging authors who are men to research equitable numbers of each gender.

Physiology (Jessica Linde et al)

​Differential correction of gender imbalance for top-cited scientists across scientific subfields over time​

Our evaluation of a comprehensive science bibliometric database with over 9 million authors who have published at least 5 full papers shows that there have been substantial corrections of the gender imbalance in the scientific workforce over time. However, these corrections are still lagging behind in many scientific subfields and vary extensively across countries. Moreover, while the difference between the number of male and female authors has overall become modest (about 1.3-fold across all scientific authors), the difference in the number of top-cited authors between the two genders remains much higher. The overall imbalance in this regard is about 2-fold in high income countries (and also in the USA specifically) and 3-fold in other countries.

bioRxiv (John P.A. Ioannidis, Kevin W. Boyack, Thomas A. Collins, and Jeroen Baas)

​Giant in Isolation: Online Journal Publishing in Nigeria​

Consequently, it is discovered that majority of the university-based journals in Nigeria are in print only. The journals don’t leverage on the supporting services from Ajol programme. Thus, it is recommended that individual researchers, universities, journal publishers and research funders in Nigeria should recognise the importance and make use of online journal publishing platforms. It is also recommended that major commercial publishers should devise means of penetrating the journal publishing market in Nigeria.

The Journal of Electronic Publishing (Alkasim Hamisu Abdu)

​SciSciNet: A large-scale open data lake for the science of science research​

To support these needs in the community, we present SciSciNet, a large-scale open data lake for the science of science research. The data lake not only incorporates databases that capture scientific publications, researchers, and institutions, but also tracks their linkages to related entities, ranging from upstream funding sources like NIH and NSF to downstream public uses, including references of scientific publications in patents, clinical trials, and media and social media mentions.

Scientific Data (Zihang Lin, Yian Yin, Lu Liu & Dashun Wang)

And finally...

I enjoyed reading How to Think Better: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught from the Farnam Street blog and perhaps you will too. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:

Good decision-makers understand a simple truth: you can’t make good decisions without good thinking, and good thinking requires time. You can pay the price now or later. The time to get it right is less than the time to correct the mistake.
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Good thinking is expensive. Bad thinking costs a fortune. Rather than accept that good thinking requires time, most people try to bargain with reality. Unfortunately, that is not how the world works.

Good thinking does indeed take time, which is why hiring strategy consultants can be helpful. In my previous role as Vice President of the Nature journals I had very little time to think. The true joy of my new life as a consultant is that I have time to read, to listen, to write, to learn, and to think. This newsletter helps me to do that and hopefully assists many of its readers keep up to date too.

Until next time,

James

Journalology

James Butcher

The Journalology newsletter helps editors and publishing professionals keep up to date with scholarly publishing, and guides them on how to build influential scholarly journals.

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