Hello fellow journalologists,
It’s been a relatively slow news week, perhaps because organisations are saving their announcements for the upcoming SSP meeting in Boston. If you’re attending the meeting, travel safe. Hopefully this newsletter will provide you with some light reading on the plane.
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News
This year’s Peer Review Week (PRW), an annual event to celebrate the value of peer review that brings together scholarly communication stakeholders, including academic publishers, associations, institutions, and researchers, will be dedicated to the theme “Innovation and Technology in Peer Review.” During the week of September 23-27, 2024, participating organizations will host events and activities to highlight the changing publishing landscape and the ongoing vital role of peer review in shaping scholarly communication. The theme was chosen via an open global poll of the scholarly community, in which 494 people voted.
Peer Review Week (announcement)
JB: The votes were split fairly equally between the four proposed topics, with the winner getting 31% of the vote.
You can share your planned Peer Review Week activities through this form. There was a huge amount of activity for PRW last year. I couldn’t keep up with all of the posts, podcasts, and webinars. Does this collective effort have a good return on investment? Are we moving the needle in a positive direction through these events? Something to consider, perhaps, for PRW 2024. Is less more?
The executive, associate, and advisory editors and all of the editorial board members of one of the most influential journals in moral and political philosophy, Philosophy & Public Affairs, have resigned en masse.
According to their statement (below), crucial aims of scholarly journals are “not well-served by commercial publishing.” Philosophy & Public Affairs is published by Wiley, the sixth largest publishing corporation in the world by revenue (over $2 billion annually).
The outgoing editors and editorial board members will be launching a new diamond open-access journal to be published by Open Library of Humanities (OLH), and will be occupying at the new journal the same positions they held at Philosophy & Public Affairs.
Daily Nous (Justin Weinberg)
JB: I asked OLH who would own the new journal. Their representative pointed me in the direction of this tweet. Charles Whalley had the same question as me.
A new study conducted by leading researchers from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and the German Economic Institute reveals that free or low-cost online access to scientific publications — as provided by
Research4Life programs — results in a surge in scientific output, particularly in health sciences, by up to 75% in low- and middle-income countries.
The
WIPO research paper conducted an empirical analysis of millions of data points, focusing on the Hinari collection of Research4Life, which is managed by the World Health Organization (WHO). Research4Life provides free or low-cost access to academic literature to researchers at more than 11,500 institutions in over 100 low- and middle-income countries.
Research4Life (announcement)
This year’s JCR will introduce unified rankings across subject categories. This approach is designed to simplify the evaluation of journal performance by providing a more comprehensive view of each journal’s standing within its respective subject area.
Each subject category ranking will include journals assigned to that category regardless of edition, including the Emerging Sources Citation Index™ (ESCI). More than 7,200 journals will have new subject category rankings with full JIF metrics in the JCR 2024 release. Of those, around 7,000 are from ESCI and 200 from the Arts & Humanities Citation Index™ (AHCI). The creation of unified category rankings will provide a simpler and more complete category view for the evaluation of journal performance.
Clarivate (Tilla Edmunds)
To better understand how the UK can tackle research misconduct, in early 2023 the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) convened an expert working group, chaired by Tracey Brown OBE, to review the challenges faced by research employers, funders, publishers, and researchers in investigating allegations of misconduct.
The findings are published in UKRIO’s report, Barriers to Investigating and Reporting Research Misconduct. The working group found that, while the parties in the system experienced the issues very differently, common themes of lack of clarity and confidence, and the need for culture change, came through strongly. It also found that, while much attention has been given in parliamentary and other discussions to a possible future regulator, there are immediate steps that can be taken to reduce the barriers to effective investigations and improve the experience for all parties.
UK Research Integrity Office (announcement)
JB: You can read the report here.
BioOne, the leading nonprofit aggregator in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences, is proud to announce the first wave of publishing partners to commit to its 2026 Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot. To date, 20 titles from 13 societies, museums, and independent presses have confirmed their participation, with up to 50 more eligible to join throughout the 2024 signup year. The effort represents a significant opportunity for BioOne to more broadly and equitably provide access to critical content while ensuring a sustainable source of revenue for its independent journal publishers.
BioOne Publishing (announcement)
Correction
Last week I wrote about the 19 Hindawi journals that will be closing in 2024. My analysis included three tables that listed the article volumes of the affected journals.
A reader contacted me because they were unable to replicate the data in the tables in this news item using a different data source. Sure enough, the numbers in last week’s newsletter were wrong because of a sorting error in Excel. I’ve been using Excel for 30 years and I’ve never made that particular mistake before.
The core messages are broadly the same, although the table showing the Hindawi journals that shrank the most between 2014 and 2023 looks rather different. Here’s the correct version.
Contrary to what I said last week, most of the journals that had reduced output have been delisted from Web of Science; only 5 of the 20 journals that shrank the most between 2014 and 2023 have not been delisted.
I’ve updated the tables on the webpage and modified one sentence to better reflect the corrected dataset.
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Other news stories
IGI Global and Scite Partner to Fortify the Next Generation of Citations
KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. Expands Research Integrity Service
CACTUS to offer author services for the AAAS SPJ program
AHCJ prompts NEJM Group to abandon embargoed article policy JB: This is a U-turn on the policy that was announced on April 19.
Introducing the Clarivate Academic AI Platform
Journal taking ‘corrective actions’ after learning author used ChatGPT to update references
A retraction milestone: 200 for one author
A wave of retractions is shaking physics
Are lab safety violations research misconduct?
2023 Impact Report | Center for Open Science
Legal threats, online trolls and low pay: the world of scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik
Publication of the fourth edition of the MHRA Style Guide
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Opinion
The technologies, platforms, and partnerships adopted by societies must continue to evolve, as very few can compete on scale or cost-effectiveness with the largest publishers. At a time when many researchers are questioning publishers’ motives, society publishers instead have a golden opportunity to reaffirm their mission of advancing science and scholarship. Sticking with the mission offers no guarantees over a society’s revenues but it is the only way to ensure a society’s relevance, now and into the future.
Charleston Hub (Rob Johnson)
JB: This is a good summary of the key challenges that society publishers face. I hope we are past the worst of the APC Gold Rush and that there will be a renewed focus on quality over quantity. Having said that, society publishers can't be complacent — some, especially in biomedicine, have lost considerable market share to the likes of Frontiers and MDPI. The key lesson to draw from the past few years is that many researchers want a quick and simple path to publication, and will choose journals that offer a good service over traditional, community-based venues. Society publishers ignore that dynamic at their peril.
The next story gives an example of this in action.
Recently, for-profit academic publishing has emerged and proliferated in dentistry. Now, an abundance of periodicals with little or no relevance to dentistry host dental research in an effort to increase the width of their scope and attract readership. These journals may rise in prominence and publication output rapidly. They include an open access fee, which is tempting for researchers looking to publish their work as this feature promotes greater chances for dissemination of information, thereby attracting citations; open access articles are more likely to be read and therefore cited in comparison to articles with open access content limited to an abstract or open access after an embargo time in the relevant databases.
European Journal of Orthodontics (Theodore Eliades et al)
JB: This editorial is co-signed by the Editors of “four major orthodontic journals and is planned to appear in these periodicals simultaneously.” It’s essentially a plea for academics to submit to their journals rather than to broad-scope journals.
I’ve seen a version of this editorial written a few times before, in other specialty journals. Let’s take a look at why the editors felt the need to write this editorial.
I used Digital Science’s Dimensions tool to search for “Orthodontics” and limited the search to: [Publication Type is Article; Document Type is Research Article]. It’s a rough and ready approach, but it should help us to understand the broad picture of what’s happened over the past decade.
The table below shows the number of Research Articles for the ten largest journals publishing orthodontics content in 2014. Every one of them published fewer papers in 2023 than in 2014. The journals highlighted in red are three of the four journals that published the recent editorial. The Angle Orthodontist published less than half as many papers in 2023 than in 2014.
The next table shows the 10 largest orthodontics journals in 2023. Note that two of the three journals highlighted in red in the 2014 table have dropped off the 2023 table. Eight of the ten journals did not appear in the 2014 table at all. The biggest journal in 2023 was more than twice the size of the biggest journal in 2014.
I’ve presented similar data in this newsletter before. This isn’t peculiar to orthodontics. There’s been a big change in authors’ publishing habits over the past decade. Authors are choosing to publish in journals that offer a fast and easy publishing experience.
One interpretation of this is that commercial publishers will publish any old rubbish for a fee. There’s certainly an element of truth to that, but remember that no one is making authors change allegiance. They are choosing to publish outside of the traditional specialty journals, presumably because they believe they can get a better service elsewhere. Search engines mean that it doesn’t matter where an author publishes, as PubMed and the like will find the paper regardless.
Promoting the community aspect of society journals is not enough. Creating a fantastic author experience is far more important.
EASE has released a new set of
draft guidelines on “How to Assess Peer Review Quality” to help journals get closer to an answer. The guidelines offer a high-level framework for evaluating the validity and reliability of peer review reports to help journals determine which aspects of their processes are working well and which may need work. EASE has
issued an RFI to gather feedback on the guidelines open now through the first of June, 2024.
Scholastica Blog (Danielle Padula interviews Mario Malički)
What, exactly, is the minimal amount of assessment necessary to qualify as peer review? It’s a theoretical question, but one with important practical implications. Funding policies often refer to “peer reviewed” scholarly publications and journals get put on the naughty list for lesser-than levels of peer review. But the line of demarcation between “peer reviewed” and “not peer reviewed” seems to be growing more hazy as the number of states between these two increases. Or is it?
Arthur J. Boston
JB: Peer review is a nebulous term. Taylor & Francis will do 20 integrity and ethics checks as part of VeriXiv. Most people would probably agree that that’s not the same as peer review (because no “peers” are involved). But how much better is it to receive two 50 word peer-review reports from academics who work in tangential subject areas?
Our project,
Estimating the Reliability and Robustness of Research (ERROR), pays specialists to check highly cited published papers, starting with the social and behavioural sciences. Our reviewers are paid a base rate of up to 1,000 Swiss francs (around US$1,100) for each paper they check, and a bonus for any errors they find. The bigger the error, the greater the reward — up to a maximum of 2,500 francs.
Authors who let us scrutinize their papers are compensated, too: 250 francs to cover the work needed to prepare files or answer reviewer queries, and a bonus 250 francs if no errors (or only minor ones) are found in their work.
ERROR launched in February and will run for at least four years. So far, we have sent out almost 60 invitations, and 13 sets of authors have agreed to have their papers assessed. One review has been completed, revealing minor errors.
Nature (Malte Elson)
JB: Spotting errors is clearly a Good Thing, but there’s no way this can work at scale. Adding $1100 in additional cost per paper would increase the publishing costs by close to 50% for an “average” paper.
We encourage all organizations that support Open Science, everywhere, to engage with the Open Science Monitoring Initiative’s
draft principles. A robust set of principles, informed by the broadest possible range of stakeholders, will be an essential asset for responsibly measuring the successes (and, where necessary, failures and unintended consequences) of all of our efforts.
The Official PLOS Blog (Veronique Kiermer and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz)
We’re so fixated on metrics because they determine funding for a university based on where it is in the rankings. So it comes from there and then it filters down. What do universities then want? Well, they want to attract people who are likely to publish papers. So how do you decide that? “Oh, you’ve already published some papers, great. We’re gonna bring you in.” And then when you’re there, you’ve got to publish even more.
You’re replacing actual findings and science and methodology and the process with what I would argue are incredibly misleading — even false — metrics. Paper mills are industrializing it. This is like the horse versus the steam engine.
New York Magazine (Kevin T. Dugan interviews Ivan Oransky)
The proliferation of Open Access (OA) business models has been rapid, presenting challenges for stakeholders in academic publishing in communicating and working effectively with one another. This article offers a comprehensive classification system for OA models, categorizing them into five core types (transactional, bundled, cooperative, sponsored, and alternative), each with distinct characteristics and implications for funding, equity, and implementation. This classification aims to clarify the myriad labels and terminologies used, addressing the inconsistencies and gaps in previous attempts to categorize OA models. By providing descriptions and analyses of different business models, the article seeks to enhance transparency around and understanding of OA options, ultimately supporting informed decision-making in the evolving landscape of academic publishing.
Zenodo (Tasha Mellins-Cohen)
JB: This is a full write up (18 pages) of Tasha’s recent post in The Scholarly Kitchen.
The researchers who write for these journals, and the academics who edit them, do this work largely unpaid. They are subsidised by the same universities that also pay healthy sums to then buy the journals in question.
This industry, estimated to be worth $45 billion, is underpinned by giant licks of taxpayer money — including from Australia, which spends $2 billion a year on medical research alone.
ABC News (Linton Besser)
JB: Not $45 billion. The journals market is worth about $10 billion. It’s difficult to take articles like this seriously when they get basic facts wrong (no one ever under-estimates the size of the market — big numbers sound more impressive), which is a shame because this article provides a good summary of the core problems that need to be addressed.
The Duplicate Submission Checker Tool started in the form of a pilot in October of last year. It’s a unique feature of the Hub that combines data across journals, publishers, and editorial systems. Adoption has grown very rapidly and we now have connected 12 publishers with more than 150 journal titles. Several publishers have integrated their entire portfolio with this application.
The results so far are very interesting: With a throughput of 20K manuscripts per month, the detection rate of a duplicate submission is over 1% — and that number is expected to grow when more publishers and journals come on board. The duplicate submission checker is now checking for duplicates on the level of metadata, but we are moving to full text this year, making use of a technology developed by one of the participating publishers.
The Scholarly Kitchen (Joris van Rossum)
The private sector funds most global research and development, and many of the results of such work are not published in peer-reviewed journals. We at Nature think it’s important that journals engage with the private sector and work with its scientists so they can submit their research for peer review and publication. This promotes the sharing of knowledge, verification of the research and the reproducibility researchers strive for. It also benefits product safety and efficacy. Progress needs more, not less, open data and code — something Nature will continue to support.
Nature (unsigned editorial)
JB: It would be easy to criticise Nature’s policy (and many have), but surely there needs to be a balance between idealism and pragmatism. Is it better to have not published the paper at all?
Nature’s news team ran a news feature on this story: Who will make AlphaFold3 open source? Scientists race to crack AI model
By mapping identified skill sets to associated roles, we aim to help publishing professionals recognize their core strengths and areas for further development while encouraging exploration of new or overlooked roles that align with their interests and competencies. The Professional Skills Map is a powerful tool for exploring individually or with a mentor to identify necessary skills for a current or desired role.
The Scholarly Kitchen (Mandy Brannon et al)
JB: The blog post is interesting, but the real value, in my opinion, is the Professional Skills Map. You can explore the various roles, and the skills that they require, in this mindmap, which is nicely done.
Editors and editorial board members have a strong voice when it comes to shaping the focus of a journal. With so many voices from a select few regions steering the direction of international journals, it is not too surprising to learn that topics considered to be interesting for an international audience may in fact be topics that are primarily of interest to those same Western regions. So, if English speakers are able to be more productive and are working on topics more likely to be accepted in international journals, they are bound to publish more. And with more publications out there, they are also likely to be cited more often. As their H-indexes grow, they may qualify for promotions, awards and prestigious positions and affiliations. And while this may not have been the intention behind selecting a single language for scholarly communication, it has unfortunately become a result.
Impact of Social Sciences (Lynne Bowker et al)
JB: DIAMAS and C4DISC are holding a joint webinar on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB) in the Institutional Publishing Ecosystem on June 4.
Other opinion articles
SSP's Early Career Development Podcast Episode 18: Industry Events for First-Timers
SSP Plane, Train, and Automobile Reads
Sustaining Through Training: Preparing the Next Generation of Editors and Peer Reviewers
Ask Athena: Reference Style and The CSE Manual
Making the Leap: Transitioning from Employee to Independent Contractor
All Together Now: Multi-Journal Approaches to Submissions Standardization
Protecting scientific integrity in an age of generative AI
Webinars
I haven’t included this section for a few weeks. The newsletter is already very long and formatting the webinar links each week became a bit of a pain.
So I’ve come up with an alternative solution. Click here:
I’ll try to keep this Google Doc updated. Please help me by sending details of webinars that you’re hosting (just hit reply to this message).
And finally...
Newsletters are cool. Everyone should have a newsletter. This week a new one was launched by Chris Leonard. Here’s the sales pitch:
This new newsletter aims to cover advances in peer review, largely but not exclusively, enabled by AI. It is my personal belief that AI will be able to write 'better-than-human' peer reviews within the next 5 years. What does that mean for the publishing industry, authors, and research as an endeavour, and how will we get there? At some point on this journey together, we'll find out.
You can subscribe to Scalene here. In case you're wondering why Chris chose the name:
And while we're scene-setting, why the name 'Scalene'? Well, there are shifting sands in the interplay between AI, humans and peer review processes, and how best to visualise that other than with triangles? At least it avoids use of the word 'axis' - which is something we should all be grateful for.
Until next time,
James