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 #52: Responsible publishing
Hello fellow journalologists, Creating this newsletter is a labour of love; I write it each week because I enjoy the process and because I want to help publishing colleagues keep up to date with a fast-moving environment. If you get value from the newsletter, the best way that you can support me is by forwarding this email to your colleagues and encouraging them to subscribe. If you’ve been reading for a while and look forward to receiving these emails every week, please consider contributing to the testimonial wall. NewsTowards Responsible PublishingIn our draft proposal, we propose a vision and a set of principles that a future scholarly communication system should aspire to, along with a mission that enables research funders – in collaboration with other key stakeholders – to deliver this.
For such a scholar-led system to be successful, it will need broad support from the research community. To understand if our proposal resonates with the community of researchers, we embark on a consultative process, with support from Research Consulting Limited in partnership with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS). This process offers researchers the opportunity to voice their opinions and contribute to the development of a proposal that serves their needs. The consultation will run from November 2023 until April 2024. Based on the feedback through this consultation, a revised proposal will be developed for the cOAlition S funders to consider in June 2024.
JB: Nature ran a news feature on this announcement, which is a good place to get up to speed. Alternatively, you could read Bodo Stern and Johan Roooryck’s blog post or an assessment by Jeff Pooley entitled The Redemption of Plan S. Unsurprisingly, given my background and what I’ve written in this newsletter before, this statement, which is one of the two key concepts that the cOAlition S proposal is based on, does not sit well with me: Authors, not third-party suppliers, decide when and what to publish. The needs of readers are just as important, if not more important, than the needs of authors (who, of course, are often both academics). Filtering is valuable. That can happen post-publication, but I can’t see academics being willing to spend as much time doing that as they currently spend on pre-publication peer review. It will be too easy to say “no time — someone else can do that”. The phrase “towards responsible publishing” suggests that the current publishing system is irresponsible, which I'm sure is deliberate. Yes, there are problems with the way that academia makes grant and tenure decisions based on a researcher’s publication history, but the checks and balances that have been used over the past 350+ years have served humanity well. I’m pleased that cOALition S is surveying the academic community and that Research Consulting is doing the work (I’ve had first-hand experience of commissioning Rob Johnson and his team, who are excellent). We need to hear a diverse range of voices and the sampling methodology will be crucial here. There are lots of people with very strong opinions (many of whom are adamant that they are right and everyone else is wrong) and it seems likely that advocates from all sides will be trying to get their voice heard. From what I've seen over the past few years, I can't see cOAlition S changing tack even if there is a negative response. Their direction of travel is clear. Having said that, it’s absolutely vital that journal editors’ voices are heard. Yes, they are part of the status quo, but they also see, first hand, the value that the current system provides. Editors of medical journals, in particular, are likely to be wary of creating an environment where clinical research is published without any checks and balances. I hope that publishers will encourage their academic editors to take the survey (which is open until Nov 29) and provide their honest feedback. If you want to skim-read the survey questions you can view the Word file here. De Gruyter introduces Paradigm Publishing ServicesDe Gruyter, a global publisher in the humanities and social sciences, is proud to announce the creation of a new dedicated division, Paradigm Publishing Services. The new division offers publishing solutions to meet the unique needs of publishers in the humanities and social sciences as well as in scientific associations, societies, and library publishing programs. At a time when achieving global accessibility while upholding financial sustainability is paramount, Paradigm Publishing Services aims to aid publishers in adapting and revitalizing their business strategies and publishing operations. De Gruyter (press release) JB: The FAQ is more helpful than the press release. This announcement comes hot on the heels of the news that De Gruyter is planning to acquire Brill (which I discussed in Issue 49). The following table summarises Paradigm’s products and services: Sage Grows Research Portfolio by Acquiring IOS PressGlobal independent academic publisher Sage has acquired IOS Press, an independent publisher founded in Amsterdam in 1987 that specializes in health, life, and computer sciences. With this move, Sage acquires nearly 100 journals and a frontlist of 70 plus books each year covering subjects such as neuroscience, medical informatics, cancer research, artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and the semantic web.
The acquisition marks significant growth in Sage’s open access (OA) program with the addition of more than 20 fully OA journals. It also expands core subject areas for Sage, such as psychology and engineering, and marks an investment in new areas such as AI and image processing.
Sage (press release) JB: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: market consolidation is a natural by-product of OA business models. Sage retracts more than 200 papers from journal for compromised peer reviewThe publisher Sage has retracted 209 articles from an engineering journal after an investigation found “compromised peer review or 3rd party involvement,” according to a company spokesperson.
The retractions, all from the International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education, stem from an investigation that led Sage to retract 122 papers – as well as fire the editor-in-chief and purge the editorial board – in December 2021.
At that time, the company marked 318 additional papers “with more complex issues” with expressions of concern as it continued investigating. All of the papers retracted today previously had expressions of concern.
Retraction Watch (Ellie Kinkaid) JB: The accompanying guest post by Adya Misra, Research Integrity & Inclusion Manager at Sage Publications, is well written. It’s easy to castigate publishers when large-scale retractions occur. Sometimes criticism is warranted, but thoughtful articles like this one show that publishers are taking their integrity role seriously. Karger and Jisc Sign Transitional Agreement with Industry-First 'Read, Publish, and Outreach' Offer to AuthorsThe innovative agreement includes optional services for science communications and dissemination, made possible through Karger’s academic outreach team. As a part of Karger's ongoing mission to make research accessible and understandable to everyone, simplified plain language and compelling formats ensure that non-scientists - including government officials and policy makers, industry partners and the general public - gain an accurate understanding of the findings. Increasing public understanding of science is critical to increasing trust in science. JB: Bundling services as part of TAs is sensible: ‘read, publish and outreach’ is a new model that I hadn’t seen before. Karger was also announced this week that they are partnering with Charlesworth, which will provide sales representation in China. Elsevier and Journals of the American College of Cardiology Launch the Heart Disease Healthcare HubElsevier, a global leader in information and data analytics , is pleased to announce the launch of the Heart Disease Healthcare Hub in partnership with the JACC Journals – Journals of the American College of Cardiology. The Heart Disease Healthcare Hub is a one-stop shop for clinical and educational cardiology content for healthcare professionals, with new, evidence-based content added throughout the year. JB: I wonder how many “one-stop-shops” there are in scholarly publishing. Enough to fill a city, perhaps? A new similarity report and AI writing detection tool soon to be available to iThenticate v2A new similarity report and AI writing detection tool soon to be available to iThenticate v2 users. In May, we updated you on the latest changes and improvements to the new version of iThenticate and let you know that a new similarity report and AI writing detection tool were on the horizon. On Wednesday 1 November 2023, Turnitin (who produce iThenticate) will be releasing a brand new similarity report and a free preview to their AI writing detection tool in iThenticate v2. The AI writing detection tool will be enabled by default and account administrators will be able to switch it off/on. CrossRef blog (Fabienne Michaud) Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Funds New Project to Openly License Life Sciences PreprintsToday, Creative Commons (CC) is excited to announce new programmatic support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to help make openly licensed preprints the primary vehicle of scientific dissemination.
The eighteen-month grant will enable CC to collaborate with CZI on a project focused on significantly increasing use of the CC BY 4.0 license on preprints in the life sciences by working with funders, preprint servers, and other preprint stakeholders.
Creative Commons (press release) JB: The press release is incredibly vague. There was no announcement from CZI as far as I’m aware. Don’t overlook race and ethnicity: new guidelines urge change for psychology researchThe United States’ largest association of psychologists has released its first recommendations for authors, reviewers and editors on how to address race, ethnicity and culture more equitably when publishing research.
The sweeping recommendations, published by the American Psychological Association (APA) on 2 November, call for authors and others involved in publishing research to adopt a wide range of practices, such as explicitly addressing the over- or undersampling of certain demographics and clarifying the limits to which a study’s results can be extrapolated to different racial and ethnic groups. The guidance is aimed at all psychology researchers, not just APA members or those who contribute to the APA’s journals.
Nature (Heidi Ledford) New UC publishing resource: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Scholarly CommunicationThe Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) at the University of California announces the launch of its new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication resource. This site supports the UC community in gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges of achieving and maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion in scholarly publishing, including concrete actions for authors, peer reviewers, journal editors, and librarians. Office of Scholarly Communication, University of California (announcement) arXiv sets new record for monthly submissionsSince its founding in 1991, arXiv has been growing exponentially – and in October, we hit a new milestone! arXiv has tracked the number of new submissions we receive every month from our very first submission in August 1991, and we share our monthly submission data on our stats page (which houses lots of interesting break downs of the data). In the month of October of 2023, there were a total of 20,710 new submissions to arXiv, beating the previous monthly record from May 2023. This past May is when we first broke the 20,000 marker for number of submissions received in a single month. This brings arXiv’s overall total submission count, from August 1991 to today, to 2,358,545! arXiv blog JB: It’s worth comparing the shape of the arXiv graph with that of Europe PMC, which covers biomedicine. Both are recording around 20,000 new preprints per month. OpinionQuantifying Consolidation in the Scholarly Journals Market2018 appears to be something of an inflection point. After three straight years of the corpus increasing by around 60,000 articles per year, 2018 saw an increase of more than 90,000 articles, followed by an additional 228,000 in 2019. This was followed by the pandemic years (2020 and 2021) which each saw more than 300,000 additional articles than the previous year. In 2022, the pandemic spike dropped off with only a 42,000-article increase over the previous year. I’ve not uncovered a clear reason for the non-pandemic aspects of this jump, although it has not escaped my attention that 2018 is the year Plan S was launched. It also coincides with significant publication volume growth from MDPI and a big jump in the publication of special issues by MDPI and Frontiers. The Scholarly Kitchen (David Crotty) What's so bad about consolidation in academic publishing?I always bristle when I read that open access is to blame for the problems with the publishing market, not simply because open access does not have to be a market-based activity (and is better when it isn’t) but more because the explanation is so shallow. It is a position that usually takes as its starting point that the natural and proper way for academic publishing to be organised is as a commercial activity and any intervention that works against this is to blame for the deleterious effects of commercialisation. Publishing is and always is a business (possibly a reflection of the constituents that the Scholarly Kitchen represents), despite the fact that it is exactly the commercial nature of publishing that is the problem. Samuel Moore’s blog JB: I always bristle when I read that commercial organisations are to blame for the problems with the publishing market. My journal was hijacked: an editor’s experienceAt the beginning of February 2023, I discovered that the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS) had been hijacked. As editor-in-chief of the publication, I had been contacted by an author confused by receiving both an acceptance letter and a desk rejection for her manuscript. I had rejected the paper because it did not align with our editorial policy. Upon investigation, the acceptance letter turned out to have been issued by cybercriminals attempting to charge her for publication in what she thought was SJIS but was in fact a fraudulent website posing as the journal. Retraction Watch (Sune Dueholm Müller) Kitchen Essentials: An Interview with Adam Hyde of CokoHowever, shifting ingrained scholarly cultures is challenging when most technologies rigidly mimic traditional journals, obstructing innovation. At Coko, we take a different approach. Our goal is providing adaptive tools to help the community transition from current workflows to desired future states. Kotahi embodies this ethos. Its flexibility facilitates experimenting with new communication paradigms while still supporting existing needs. Custom configurations enable all kinds of models from journals and preprints to preprint review, open peer review, micropublications, and beyond. Too often technology limits possibility. We are working hard to remove those limits, inviting communities to reimagine how they work. The Scholarly Kitchen (interview with Adam Hyde) Implementing AI GovernanceOrganisations tend to be inherently resistant to change, as their decisions typically necessitate consensus from multiple parties. Adopting a cautious stance tends to appease the majority, although this caution is frequently excessive. Given the current climate of extensive hype and uncertainty, I believe that participating in open, constructive discussions represents the optimal path forward. Such dialogue enables open societies to reach well-informed decisions, which is precisely why I am eager to engage in conversations of this nature. Ian Mulvany’s blog Journal ClubChatGPT identifies gender disparities in scientific peer reviewThe peer review process is a critical step in ensuring the quality of scientific research. However, its subjectivity has raised concerns. To investigate this issue, I examined over 500 publicly available peer review reports from 200 published neuroscience papers in 2022–2023. OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence ChatGPT was used to analyze language use in these reports, which demonstrated superior performance compared to traditional lexicon- and rule-based language models... The results further revealed that female first authors received less polite reviews than their male peers, indicating a gender bias in reviewing. In addition, published papers with a female senior author received more favorable reviews than papers with a male senior author, for which I discuss potential causes. eLife (Jeroen PH Verharen) JB: eLife’s magazine section included a summary: Assessing peer review with AI. Early-career factors largely determine the future impact of prominent researchers: evidence across eight scientific fieldsOur analysis shows that the future success of a researcher is often determined early on in their career. Indeed, we show that as early as 5 years after the first publication, we can already make accurate predictions of whether a prominent researcher is going to be within the top quartile of leading researchers later on or not. Our study, while limited to prominent scientists, shows that early-career factors also establish a hierarchy within this group of scientists that is sustained over time. Scientific Reports (Alexander Krauss, Lluís Danús & Marta Sales-Pardo) And finally...Last month 246 journals published the same editorial, Time to Treat the Climate and Nature Crisis as One Indivisible Global Health Emergency simultaneously. All of the 246 editorials have the same text and the same authors. This may prove to be the best opportunity yet to measure the correlation between the citations that a paper receives and its impact factor. I discussed the topic of citations and the Matthew effect in Issue 12 of this newsletter. It seems likely that the editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine will be cited more than the identical editorial published in the Nigerian Journal of Medical and Dental Education. Impact factors are due partly to the strength of a journal’s brand and the reach that it has. Until next time, James P.S. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you should test your knowledge with the quiz in this month’s Nature Reviews Physics editorial. |
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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