Hello fellow journalologists,
It’s been a busy week, so I’m going to cut to the chase and keep this introduction short. There are lots of interesting snippets in this issue. If I had to suggest you read just one, it would probably be the first item in Journal Club, which provides two librarians’ view of transformative agreements, although I also found the Scientific Data article on CORE to be informative too.
News
Other researchers have proposed that all journals should have the same set of guidelines or allow completely free-format submissions. But on the basis of a review of more than 300 journals’ guidelines and interviews with scientists and journal editors, the authors recommend a “golden-middle” solution that would allow researchers to submit manuscripts without following specific formatting demands, but instead abiding by minimal structural requirements such as total word count. Varga and his colleagues are planning to launch an “aggressive” outreach campaign to journals, publishers, universities, funders and organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to implement their recommendations. They have already launched an online petition that more than 100 people have signed.
Nature (Max Kozlov)
JB: Remember this news story when you get to the item later in the newsletter about gaining consensus on definitions of open peer review...
The spate of mass walkouts from journals suggests that editors are no longer willing to tolerate the “exploitative” practices seen in some parts of academic publishing, said Dr Derrick, associate professor at the University of Bristol’s School of Education.
“Editorial boards are rightly demanding that the practices of their journals align with their community norms, not the business strategies of the publishing houses,” she said.
Warning that “these types of mass walkouts [are now] more likely”, she added that “these are highly principled arguments and concerns and, where publishing houses do not relent, researchers are responding with their feet”.
Times Higher Education (Jack Grove)
JB: David Crotty noted in the latest issue of The Brief that there’s a Wikipedia page that tracks editorial walkouts. A cursory glance suggests that mass editorial resignations have been happening sporadically over the past few decades. It does seem likely that publishers' desire to increase article volumes (in order to keep journals afloat) will rile editorial boards more frequently in the future. Good communication between publishers and editors is vital.
Tanzania’s government has offered scientists 50 million Tanzanian shillings (roughly US$22,000) if they can publish their research in a well-known journal. Researchers had until the end of last month to apply for the scheme. A total of 1 billion shillings ($423,575) has been allocated annually for the Research Excellence Award. It aims to boost publications from Tanzania’s researchers in “internationally renowned and the most reputable journals”, says Maulilio Kipanyula, director of science, technology and innovation at Tanzania’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Dar es Salaam.
Nature (Syriacus Buguzi)
José Manuel Lorenzo is the head of research at the Meat Technology Center (CTC) — an entity dedicated to meat products, supported by the regional government of Galicia — in San Cibrao das Viñas, a city in the Spanish province of Ourense. A person who has worked with him recalls that, around 2018, his laboratory became “a sausage factory.” Lorenzo went from publishing less than 20 studies a year to signing his name to more than 120. “He doesn’t even have time to read them,” says another person, who has collaborated on projects with the man.
El País (Manuel Ansede)
JB: This anecdote appeals to the Butcher in me.
In 2022 OA research published in Springer Nature’s hybrid journals by authors whose institution is part of a TA grew three times faster than OA research published in these titles by authors whose institution was not part of a TA (“author choice”)(3).
The increase in number of agreements Springer Nature reached has led to OA content published in its hybrid portfolio growing by nearly 40% since 2017.
TAs are also proving instrumental in enabling authors in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) to publish OA. Over 90% of HSS OA content in its hybrid journals, is now published via a TA, having grown at a faster rate than OA HSS content not published via a TA (4).
Springer Nature Group press release
JB: Transformative Agreements are good news for Springer Nature and other large commercial publishers that have large sales teams to negotiate them. They are damaging to smaller publishers that are stuggling to compete. See the first story in the ‛Journal Club’ section for an alternative viewpoint.
THE’s SDG Impact Dashboard provides a vital tool for universities’ sustainability work by providing rich data on performance and clear insight into best practice from around the world.
Times Higher Education (announcement)
Opinion
The Fully OA group invites other publishers and organizations involved in peer review to join our call to move towards a shared definition of open review and its various aspects. From an author and reviewer perspective it must be confusing to navigate the options alone, let alone the different terminology for those variations.
Fully OA Publishers Blog
JB: Language is fluid — people use words and terms in different ways. Even if a consensus was somehow reached, the chances of it being followed by the majority is slim to none. Virtually all of the ‘influential’ journals have developed their own style guide. Journals have different requirements for reference formatting (see first news story). Having said that, I rather like the terms “open identities”, “open reports” and “open participation” as this group suggests. Maybe it will stick.
Why are we disallowing the use of generative AI in visual content? Ultimately, it is a question of integrity. The process of publishing — as far as both science and art are concerned — is underpinned by a shared commitment to integrity. That includes transparency. As researchers, editors and publishers, we all need to know the sources of data and images, so that these can be verified as accurate and true. Existing generative AI tools do not provide access to their sources so that such verification can happen.
Nature (unsigned editorial)
This statement revises our earlier “WAME Recommendations on ChatGPT and Chatbots in Relation to Scholarly Publications” (January 20, 2023). The revision reflects the proliferation of chatbots and their expanding use in scholarly publishing over the last few months, as well as emerging concerns regarding lack of authenticity of content when using chatbots. These Recommendations are intended to inform editors and help them develop policies for the use of chatbots in papers published in their journals. They aim to help authors and reviewers understand how best to attribute the use of chatbots in their work, and to address the need for all journal editors to have access to manuscript screening tools. In this rapidly evolving field, we will continue to modify these recommendations as the software and its applications develop.
WAME
Most scientific publications are in English, which reduces the visibility of valuable research in other languages and can lead to a loss of cultural diversity and heritage. In my view, language diversity in scholarly publications and in author names should be incorporated into journals, databases and bibliographic indexes. Although Google Scholar and PubMed, for instance, provide global and multidisciplinary bibliographic data, they — in particular PubMed — typically render authors’ names in English or other languages with Latin-rooted alphabets. This can lead to confusion and errors.
Nature (Khaled Moustafa)
There are most certainly commercial drivers at work. For many publishers, radical change is a threat to a very profitable business model that they want to protect. Publishers operate in a conservative system in which change is slow and blocked, in large part by a fundamentally broken system of researcher incentives and rewards. Most established researchers have been practicing closed science for years, even decades. Changing these old habits requires some upfront time and effort. Technology is helping speed this process of adopting open habits, but behavioral change is hard.
The Official PLOS Blog (Alison Mudditt)
By the end of 2023, I estimate that roughly half of the papers published will be open access. However, the corresponding revenue that this brings in will only account for about 15% of that. This is a huge disparity between the share of output versus the share of money. But, although the money accounts for a relatively small proportion of it, it is growing very quickly. Roughly half of the growth in the value of the journals' publishing market is accounted for by that small share of value of open access. This is fascinating and suggests that we are witnessing an industry in transition where more and more content is going to be open. It is an open question as to whether the revenue will suddenly catch up to match open output or if the total value of the journal publishing industry will slightly decrease because publishers make less revenue per paper on their open models than they do on their subscription models. There will likely be a gap, though it is difficult to say exactly where that will land.
Inspiring STEM podcast (transcript of a discussion between Dan Pollock and the host, Martin Delahunty). You can watch the video here.
An AI system could conceivably be used to write expert reviews and make decisions on papers, taking away much of the job of the reviewer. But should it? An analogous question is being asked with the use of AI in medicine (and in other professions in which humans are often required to make subjective decisions). Right now, most would agree that though AI systems can help physicians in clinical practice, they cannot replace physicians. I tend to think that AI systems can’t replace reviewers for similar reasons. In roles that require judgment, we still need humans with expertise.
Hindustan Times (Anirban Mahapatra)
Much of what comes next we are already seeing take shape now. For example, the continued growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in publishing. It is an incredibly exciting time for some of the projects we have in development and I look forward to seeing how AI will be able to support our journals and editors. Where it can help us streamline work I hope we can embrace it. For example, tech that can produce summaries of research papers (with a human edit on top) aids us in our mission to make science more accessible. It would be amazing if we could do this for every research paper. Or using AI for editors to ask questions of research. Seeing where it can help them with technical verification. It is on us to use tech advancements positively and responsibly to make science better.
Springer Nature Advancing Discovery blog (Ritu Dhand)
Journal Club
It could be problematic if these journals are favoured compared to other journals that are not included in a TA. If a researcher has the choice of two equivalent journals it is likely that they will choose the one where the APC is already paid for. We have noticed a shift in researchers’ questions from ‘which journal is the best for my article to get published in’ to ‘where could I publish my article without having to pay an APC?’.
A consequence of the strong focus on TAs in Sweden is that hybrid journal publishers are favoured, at the expense of fully open access publishers.
The TAs also benefit larger publishers since they have the option of offering these kinds of agreements. The smaller publishers, often learned societies, usually do not have the same options and are left behind. Bibsam’s goal is to include and support different business models and they strive to enter TAs with smaller publishers as well.
UKSG Insights (Sara Parmhed and Johanna Säll)
JB: This encapsulates the significant drawback of Transformative Agreements (TAs): they are likely to increase market consolidation as smaller publishers don’t have the resources to negotiate (highly complex) TAs. Losing out on revenue is one thing. Losing out on submissions is another entirely, and is likely to cause many small publishers to either seek commercial partners or go under, especially since many are already rapidly losing market share to the likes of Frontiers and MDPI.
CORE aggregates open access research papers from thousands of data providers from all over the world including institutional and subject repositories, open access and hybrid journals. CORE is the largest collection of OA literature–at the time of writing this article, it provides a single point of access to scientific literature collected from over ten thousand data providers worldwide and it is constantly growing. It provides a number of ways for accessing its data for both users and machines, including a free API and a complete dump of its data.
Scientific Data (Petr Knoth et al)
JB: I learnt a lot from skim-reading this article. At Clarke & Esposito we often talk about “super-continents” of OA content. Last week’s Journalology newsletter discussed Frontiers’ partnership with ResearchGate and the collaboration between Elsevier’s Science Direct and some chemistry publishers. Publishers want to be able to measure usage of content because that helps to justify article processing charges (APCs). It seems possible that one day aggregators that scrape OA content could become the ultimate destination for academics.
When the UN adopted the SDGs in 2015 to focus attention on the major challenges facing the world, it did so seeking to recognise all 193 signatory countries equally. It has always been apparent that some of the worst problems facing humanity are felt much more keenly in developing countries, however the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and even out inequalities.
However, there has been a nagging doubt, to paraphrase George Orwell, that ‘all countries are equal, but some countries are more equal than others’. This fear has been realized in a landmark white paper by Times Higher Education (THE), Prince Sultan University and Digital Science, titled ‘Research in the Context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the Developed and Developing World: Evidence From the Past 15 Years’ and available on the website of the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Congress where it was released last week.
Digital Science blog (Simon Linacre)
JB: You can read the white paper here.
And finally...
If you want to better understand how meta-data is used in scholarly communication, then this infographic is a great place to start. It somehow manages to make a complex topic crystal clear.
Frontiers has its own version of ‛TED Talks’ called ‛Frontiers Forum Live’. The videos are now available with contributions from Jane Goodall, Ban Ki-moon, Al Gore, Johan Rockström and Yuval Noah Harari. Not a bad guest list!
Once you’ve finished watching those videos you may want to cast a vote for the theme for Peer Review Week 2023.
Until next time,
James