Hello fellow journalologists,
I’m back from a week walking in the hills and I’ve just about caught up with the news wires. Here are five stories from the past fortnight that are likely to have broad appeal to this newsletter’s audience.
In the future The Jist will be devoid of comments from me, but for now I just can’t help myself while the full length Journalology is on hold over the summer.
News
Focusing on generative AI or on low-quality journals alone is insufficient. We need a system-wide approach that reviews and rethinks the link between publishing, reward and recognition; equity in research dissemination; research integrity; and one that takes technological change seriously.
The system is about to break. We need creative thinking and commitment from all players to fix it and to build something better.
The Guardian (Mandy Hill)
JB: This quote is from the Managing director of Cambridge University Press. Mandy’s letter is one of three published by The Guardian in response to Quality of scientific papers questioned as academics ‘overwhelmed’ by the millions published, which was published on July 13.
The topic of overwhelm was also covered in Have we already hit the peer review breaking point?, an analysis by Mark Hahnel, the founder of Figshare, who wrote:
Based on the current model, the peer review system becomes mathematically impossible remarkably quickly. If we assume each paper needs 2-3 reviews and there are roughly 20 million active researchers globally who could potentially serve as reviewers, we hit a crisis point for submissions quite quickly. And this is assuming a steady, not exponential, growth curve for the number of papers submitted each year.
I don’t agree with the underlying assumption in Mark’s analysis — that Elsevier’s submissions and publication growth are indicative of growth in the global market — but the general point that he and Mandy make in their two articles is a good one. The current system isn’t sustainable. Something needs to change. And fast.
While the ACS publishing options have generated lots of discussion, several of the other major publishers have adopted a straightforward approach: they have mostly doubled down on their insistence that the only way to publish with them is by paying for open access, and have pulled back on automatically depositing articles to PubMed Central for authors who follow a subscription publishing route.
Authors Alliance (Dave Hansen)
JB: This is a helpful article because it summarises how the major publishers have responded to the NIH mandate. The section about Wiley is interesting; they seem to have got themselves into a bit of a pickle.
Medical journals didn’t create the problem of industry-funded research, but they are a critical safeguard against the bias that would exist if funders were the gatekeepers through which science is communicated. Though funding might influence what is studied, it should never dictate how research is judged — nor how it is communicated to physicians, patients and the public. Independent journals protect that boundary by applying the same rigorous and transparent standards to every study, no matter who has paid to conduct it.
The Washington Post (Eric Rubin and Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo)
JB: This is a much needed opinion piece from the Editors-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, the two most influential US general medical journals.
Let’s be clear, many funders — pharmaceutical companies, national funders and charitable funders — believe that they should be able to dictate how and where the work they pay for is published. That’s a dangerous, if increasingly well-trodden, path, in my opinion.
The survey included responses from 79 participants, including 36 sleuths, 22 institutional research-integrity officers and 21 researchers and journal editors.The majority of them were from Europe. In her preprint, Bishop said there was broad agreement between sleuths and research-integrity officers that the pressure to publish can encourage dubious practices, and that institutions must take action when serious misconduct is found.
However, there were also stark disagreements. A little less than 6% of sleuths agreed that current reporting channels for misconduct are effective, compared to 77% of research-integrity officers. In free comments, some sleuth respondents said they thought institutional investigations into potential misconduct are too slow, or are hindered by conflicts of interest.
Nature (Miryam Naddaf)
Fifteen years after publishing an explosive but long-criticized paper claiming to describe a microbe that could substitute arsenic for phosphate in its chemical makeup, Science is retracting the article, citing “expanded” criteria for retraction.
The authors stand by their findings and disagree with the retraction, and contend the decision doesn’t reflect best practices for publishers.
Retraction Watch (Ellie Kincaid)
And finally...
This story, about a home economics journal based out of Pakistan, raised an eyebrow:
Elsevier delisted the journal Nurture, published by “Nurture Publishing Group,” from the publisher’s citation database in June 2024, after indexing it for a dozen years.
The journal’s address is listed as 207 Regent Street, London, a short walk from the Nature offices in Kings Cross. It’s probably not worth paying Nurture Publishing Group a visit, though, as 3800 other companies are based in that office too, according to Retraction Watch.
Mind you, I shouldn’t throw stones in glasshouses. The address listed at the end of this email is thousands of miles away from where I’m based here in the UK; the address is a legal requirement and is the home of the software I’ve been using to create this newsletter, Kit.
Until next time,
James