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.
Journalology #64: Competition or collaboration?
Hello fellow journalologists, There was a time, not so long ago, when the very idea of the three largest physics publishers collaborating would have been anathema. Like many academic societies working in the same subject area, competition was intense. So last week’s announcement came as a bit of a surprise. AIP Publishing, the American Physical Society, and IOP Publishing have joined forces to create Purpose-Led Publishing (PLP), a new coalition with a promise to always put purpose above profit.
The three scholarly publishers are united by their not-for-profit status, with all the funds made from publishing going back into the research ecosystem. Their collective contributions support the physical science community globally through a range of initiatives, including educational training and mentorship programmes, and awards and grants — all geared toward making science accessible and inclusive to everyone.
But times have changed; in an open access world, scale wins. These three society publishers, who between them publish around half of all research papers in the physical sciences, have come to the very sensible conclusion that they are stronger together. If you haven’t seen it already, this promotional video for Purpose Led Publishing is a good way to quickly get up to speed. A key part of the messaging is that these publishers “put purpose above profit” and that “science is our only shareholder” (which is a fabulous tagline; a gold star to whoever came up with that one). You could argue that commercial publishers that are listed on the stock exchange make a valuable contribution to society because a significant proportion of their shares are owed by pension funds (you do want a pension, right?). You could also argue that in some countries not-for-profits have to spend their surplus in order to maintain their charitable status, which gives them less of an incentive to keep costs under control. However, many academics deeply dislike the idea of supporting commercial publishers and so academic societies often use their charitable status as a differentiator, which could be a sensible thing to do, if it works. Indeed, this isn’t the first time that this approach has been adopted. Some readers may remember Phil Davis’ post in The Scholarly Kitchen back in 2017 about an mBio editorial entitled Support Science by Publishing in Scientific Society Journals. In Phil’s words: What is causing the decline in society journal publishing? Schloss and colleagues attribute the combined effects of high-impact “glam journals” and mega journals, both of which are drawing authors (and their papers) away from society journals.
While the authors present new data, they vent several complaints about scientific publishing. It reads as if they are blaming commercial publishers for their success.
The following year a small group of UK publishers created The Society Publishers’ Coalition (SocPC), which now has around 150 members. In SocPC’s words: However, our members must be non-profit organisations with their own publishing program (books or journals) who use any surpluses from publishing to support their scholarly communities. This allows us to have very different conversations than we could if there were larger corporate publishers involved. We are not a trade association. Purpose Led Publishing, is a new initiative, distinct from SocPC, focusing, at least for the moment, on the physical sciences. The announcement and website are light on detail regarding exactly how they will work together. We can make some educated guesses, though, because society publishers face common challenges. Transformative agreements (TAs) take large sales teams to negotiate, which makes it hard for even medium sized publishers to remain competitive. The big concern is that authors will choose to submit to journals that have a TA with their institution; society publishers could see their submissions drop if they are unable to get sufficient TAs in place. Combining forces to improve sales across the three society publishers could make strategic sense. Furthermore, over the past decade important technology infrastructures have been acquired by the large commercial publishers, making it harder than ever for society publishers to self publish. Author marketing is increasingly important and this is another potential way for societies to collaborate. After all, between them these three physics publishers have deep roots into the communities that they serve. Times are tough for academic societies that have a journals programme especially in some subject areas, where Frontiers and MDPI have taken away a good chunk of their market share. The physical sciences have not been affected as much by new fully OA entrants over the past 20 years, as you can see in the table below (source: Digital Science’s Dimensions; search limited to Research Articles). However, that doesn’t mean that their markets aren’t increasingly competitive. As more papers are published open access, the revenue per article will drop. Scale is needed to survive and thrive. While it’s sensible to emphasise their not-for-profit status, society publishers’ real competitive advantage is that they know their community’s needs better than any large commercial publisher ever will. And as data publishing becomes more widespread (see story below) it seems likely that society publishers will be able to double down on the specific needs of their communities much better than broad-scope publishers, which will have to create solutions for a myriad of different data formats. Will this new coalition be a one-off? Will other society publishers follow suit and build their own alliances and move from competition to collaboration? Can we expect the ACS and the RSC to publicly declare a relationship that has chemistry? How about the AHA, ACC and ESC? Will they express more ❤️ for each other than they have in the past? Some of these alliances seem highly unlikely given past history, but desperate times can require desperate measures. The wolves are circling and there’s safety in numbers. NewsLeadership changes at cOAlition S We are delighted to announce that Mari Sundli Tveit, Chief Executive of the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and President of Science Europe has been appointed as Chair of the cOAlition S Leaders Group.
Mari succeeds Marc Schiltz, who has stepped down from his role as Secretary General at the National Research Fund (FNR) in Luxembourg. Given Marc’s central role in developing and supporting Plan S from its inception in 2018, we are pleased to confirm that Marc will continue to provide strategic input to the cOAlition S Executive Steering Group as a non-voting member.
Plan S (announcement) All journals open access in 2024 following successful Subscribe To Open roundEMS Press is delighted to announce that all 22 journals in its Subscribe To Open (S2O) programme will be published as open access for the 2024 subscription period. This means that for the first time the Press’s annual journal output will be entirely open access, with a blend of S2O and Diamond publications. EMS Press (announcement) JB: Don’t confuse EMS with EDP, as I did when trying to search for this this article from May 2023: EDP Sciences decides against Open Access transition under S2O for Radioprotection in 2023 DataCite launches first release of the Data Citation CorpusDataCite, in partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), is delighted to announce the first release of the Data Citation Corpus. A major milestone in the Make Data Count initiative, the release makes eight million data citations openly available and usable for the first time via an interactive dashboard and public data file. We invite the community to engage with the data and provide feedback on this collaborative effort.
As highlighted by Make Data Count, the lack of a centralized resource for citations to datasets has hindered the evaluation of how open data is being used. To address this gap, DataCite, with funding from the Wellcome Trust, has developed an innovative aggregation that brings together for the first time data citations from diverse sources into a comprehensive and publicly accessible resource for the global community.
Make Data Count (announcement) Flatpage Announces the Publication of the Art of Academic EditingWhether you’re approaching academic editing as an author or an editor, this book will demystify the key stages in the editorial process. The Art of Academic Editing is the first full-length guide to the different types of editorial services and when they happen in the life cycle of a scholarly text. It will facilitate more effective collaboration between authors and editors as the field of academic editing expands. Flatpage (announcement) Who Would Have Thought That We Needed Another Listserv?… I decided to take the leap and I created a new listserv, called Open Café, dedicated to “the free, open, constructive, and civil discussion of issues related to open scholarship – including open access, open science, open data, and adjacent topics. Open Café is a place for people across the full spectrum of viewpoints and perspectives to ask questions, offer opinions, and share information in an environment of mutual respect and openmindedness.” The Scholarly Kitchen (Rick Anderson) JB: I read somewhere recently that 65% of people on LinkedIn never engage with the content (no, not even with a ‘like’). How many people will engage with this listserv? Should a KPI be the proportion of subscribers who post at least once in their first year? So far, the usual suspects have been engaging. Will employees from publishers put their head above the parapet to take part? That seems unlikely, which is a shame because for this kind of initiative to work we need engagement from all corners of the community, even the commercial publishers. AI enhanced Cheminar events: Thieme partners with CassyniThieme is partnering with Cassyni to enhance “Thieme Cheminars”, a series of live online seminars for the chemistry community. Cassyni offers several quality features that will make the series of mini-symposia more interesting and discoverable. Central to the partnership is a shared mission of building a rich interactive online experience for the research community.
Events will be hosted by editorial members from the Thieme portfolio of chemistry journals and the reference work Science of Synthesis, introducing talks presented by Thieme authors of papers judged to be particularly outstanding. Cheminar events are free to attend and cover topics at the forefront of chemical research of interest to scientists both in academia and industry.
Thieme (press release) Other news storiesIOP Publishing joins OA Switchboard to streamline open access reporting Pamela Kunz, MD, Named Editor-in-Chief of New JCO Oncology Advances. JB: Every publisher needs a portfolio strategy. This new journal is an obvious addition to ASCO’s roster of journals. “Quarter of scholarly record may be at risk” JB: Here’s the link to Martin Eve's report. This article from Research Information provides a useful summary Announcing NISO’s New Strategic Plan Add an infrastructure to Infra Finder Scopus AI Webinar : Navigating essential practices in responsible Gen AI JB: the webinar is being held on Feb 27. FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Marks the Anniversary of OSTP's Year of Open Science Blog post 31 Jan 2024 | The OA Switchboard ResearchGate and Cambridge University Press & Assessment announce new Journal Home partnership Fake research papers flagged by analysing authorship trends JB: I covered this paper a month ago in issue 60. Come on, Nature, keep up! Job posting: Executive Director of ASAPbio (deadline Feb 19) JB: Jessica Polka is joining Astera Institute as Open Science Program Director. The European landscape of institutional publishing - A synopsis of results from the DIAMAS survey OpinionI’m not a chatbot – I promise!Imagine my surprise when I received reviews on a submitted paper declaring that it was the work of ChatGPT. One reviewer wrote that it was “obviously ChatGPT”, and the handling editor vaguely agreed, saying that they found “the writing style unusual”. Surprise was just one emotion I experienced; I also felt shock, dismay and a flood of confusion and alarm. Given how much work I put into writing, it was a blow to be accused of being a chatbot — especially without any evidence. Nature (E. M. Wolkovich) Kitchen Essentials: An Interview with Sami Benchekroun of MorressierWe also make research integrity checks available in a standalone workflow. This enables clients to efficiently check papers at scale without the need to partner with many different integrity vendors in parallel, uploading documents to multiple systems. We lead the market in aggregating these integrity checks, and we also develop some of our own. The majority of our clients currently are societies, publishers, and their sister organizations, who serve authors, editors, and reviewers. As part of our growth plan we aim to be industry leaders in manuscript and research integrity workflows. The Scholarly Kitchen (Roger Schonfeld interviews Sami Benchekroun) Reader Engagement Is Central to Author ExperienceThe shift from the subscription model to open access—and the corresponding shift in the parties we call customers from institutions to authors—has translated into an industry obsession with author experience: Industry conferences are chockfull of panels on engaging authors; publishers are thinking more critically about their submission systems, sometimes even investing in homegrown models à la Frontiers and Hindawi; and commercial and society publishers alike are building their organizational strategies around content acquisition, or systematic relationship management that resembles sales and marketing more so than traditional editorial.
Our data dashboards have transformed right along with us. For many of us, gone are the days of monitoring downloads per article or being singularly focused on citation metrics; instead, we pore over submissions, publications, and time-to-decision. So, in 2024, in a world where author centricity is championed as the most crucial component of competitive advantage, who cares about reader engagement?
Origin Editorial (Ginny Herbert) JB: I care about reader engagement, Ginny! Readers are authors wearing a different hat. We mustn't lose sight of the KPIs we measured before open access became the dominant business model. Editor publisher relationship: A perfect target for paper millsWith editor misconduct, the problem stays with the publisher and it can be a difficult and contentious issue to resolve. It is the volunteer nature of the editorial role that makes it difficult for publishers to talk about editor misconduct in general terms or investigate individual editors about suspected misconduct. It is even more difficult for publishers to address questionable editorial practices, especially if the practices have been in place for a long time. Publishers may fear causing offence or perceive that they are encroaching on ‘editorial freedom’. Jigesha Patel blog Editor-in-Chief TransitionsThe EIC needs to be available to a successor before and after the transition in leadership. In some cases, an EIC might elect to invite a future successor into meetings and activities or delegate duties to enable the individual to develop needed skills. The EIC occupies a unique role and is engaged in far more of the editorial process than is often apparent on the surface, for example, publication ethics and perceived or real conflicts of interest. Depending on the organization and the journal, the EIC may also have a substantial role in budgeting and financial planning, which requires interaction with management and organizational leadership. Although an incoming EIC may never be fully prepared for all that will be required, exposure to every aspect of the job is critical to a successful transition. Science Editor (Craig R Denegar and David H Perrin) Artificial Intelligence and Language Translation in Scientific PublishingThe future of language translation should be a hybrid model that integrates AI technologies. Continued collaborations between researchers, linguists, and AI experts will lead to more sophisticated models capable of handling different languages, which are hopefully able to capture cultural nuances. As AI continues to evolve, researchers, authors, and publishers should navigate the ethical considerations associated with bias and ensure that the human touch remains integral in the translation process. The future holds exciting possibilities for the translation field in the scholarly publishing and scientific community, and these advancements will help ensure the dissemination of knowledge across language barriers. Science Editor (Sarah Frances Gordon) Why scientists are rebelling against traditional journal publishersTo fill the resulting void, we founded a new nonprofit open access journal last spring, Imaging Neuroscience, where we’re working to keep article charges to $1,600 and waiving them entirely for researchers from low-income countries. Response to the new journal has been incredible, with 150 submissions within the first two months and more than 1,200 researchers signed up to review. Two volumes have already been published and more papers are available online. Meanwhile, NeuroImage continues to publish, but reports reaching the former editors indicate that it has struggled to find people to serve as editors and reviewers and has resorted to using some of Elsevier’s nonscientist staff editors to keep operating. STAT (Shella Keilholz) If journals are to be purged of racist and sexist work, who decides where to draw the line?Academics should reject attempts to weaponise research integrity in pursuit of political ends without exception. Otherwise, political and commercial actors can and will launch forensic audits of the records of scholars from the ‘enemy’ camp to detect imaginary or miniscule infractions of the academic rulebook with the sole aim of intimidating, harassing and silencing scholars whose conclusions they dislike. Impact of Social Sciences (Till Bruckner) Other opinion articlesInnovative funding systems are key to fighting inequities in African science Transition Story: Karen Klein Author summaries: Increase discoverability with ScienceOpen In the AI science boom, beware: your results are only as good as your data Protecting Commercial AI Rights is Harder than You Think - EU Edition ALPSP: AI = Friend or Foe for Protecting Research Integrity? Open science — embrace it before it’s too late ISR Roundtable 2023: The future of preserving the integrity of the scholarly record together BishopBlog: An (intellectually?) enriching opportunity for affiliation INTERVIEW: Re-enforcing the power of open science Could ‘write once/read many’ discourage cheating? ISR Roundtable 2023: The future of preserving the integrity of the scholarly record together Unveiling Perspectives on Peer Review and Research Integrity: Survey Insights Journal ClubPublishers’ and journals’ instructions to authors on use of generative artificial intelligence in academic and scientific publishing: bibliometric analysisSubstantial heterogeneity was found in guidance on the application of GAI [generative AI] use in academic research and scholarly writing. To our knowledge, none of the proposed recommendations were formulated through a structured consensus based guideline development process. This scenario highlights an urgent need for the establishment of cohesive, cross disciplinary policies. Such guidance should be crafted in a structured manner, integrating the perspectives of all stakeholders. This approach is crucial to counteract the Babel Tower phenomenon—that is, the confusion and lack of standardization that results from individual parties creating their own unique regulations. BMJ (Conner Ganjavi et al) JB: Journals can’t agree on a common style guide (e.g. how to style references), so it seems a bit much to expect them to agree on how to deal with generative AI. In clinical publishing the ICMJE tends to provide leadership, but I doubt its methods fall under the category of a “structured consensus based guideline development process”. Autonomous, bidding, credible, decentralized, ethical and funded (ABCDEF) publishingHere, we propose a system that integrates ethics reviews, peer reviews, and funding in a decentralized manner, based on Web3 technology. This autonomous, transparent, decentralized system would help shape cutting-edge scientific research and boost scientific transparency, efficiency, ethics, and reproducibility. We have already established a decentralized community called MinDAO to realize such a system as a host. F1000Research (Taiki Oka et al) Detection of tortured phrases in scientific literatureThis paper presents various automatic detection methods to extract so called tortured phrases from scientific papers. These tortured phrases, e.g. flag to clamor instead of signal to noise, are the results of paraphrasing tools used to escape plagiarism detection. We built a dataset and evaluated several strategies to flag previously undocumented tortured phrases. The pro- posed and tested methods are based on language models and either on embeddings similarities or on predictions of masked token. We found that an approach using token prediction and that propagates the scores to the chunk level gives the best results. With a recall value of .87 and a precision value of .61, it could retrieve new tortured phrases to be submitted to domain experts for validation. arXiv (Eléna Martel, Martin Lentschat, and Cyril Labbé) And finally...The SSP event in Bristol last Thursday was a lot of fun. The title of my talk was “Is there a future for journal editors?”, which initiated a lively discussion over drinks and pizza (and on LinkedIn here). You can download the slides I used here. At the end of the month I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on “Improving manuscript transfers for authors”. You can sign up here for the webinar, which will be held on February 29. Until next time, James |
Journalology
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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