The landscape of scholarly publishing

8th International Scientific and Practical ConferenceInternational scientific publication - 2019: strategy and tactics for management and development

Pippa Smart

Pippa.smart@gmail.comEASE President

Publishing Consultant

Editor-in-Chief, Learned Publishing

European Association of Science Editors (EASE)

• Professional organization of science editors and communicators

• Founded in 1982

• Members around the world

• Delighted to welcome our Russian colleagues!

Excellence and Accountability for Science Editors

Our mission:

• To improve the global standard and quality of science editing by promoting the value of science editors and supporting professional development, research, and collaboration

Excellence and Accountability in Science Editing

European Science Editing (ESE)

• Quarterly journal

• Scope

• science editing and publishing,

science writing, indexing, archiving,

communication, informatics,

scientometrics, etc.

Follow on Twitter: @Eur_Sci_Ed

www.ease.org.uk/publications/european-science-editing

Vibrant conferences

EASE 2018 Conference in Bucharest, June 2018

SAVE THE DATE !Valencia, Spain

11-15 June, 2020

Promoting sustainability and diversity in research: the role of editors

• Topics to be covered will include:

– sex, gender and racial diversity in research and editing;– how to remove communication barriers with language and technical

editing;– how to support ethical research with reproducible results;– the promotion of data archiving and access;– managing the burden of quality review and editing;– ensuring public outreach and the importance of editors in the

promotion of sustainable, diverse, science.

EASE Guidelines and toolkits

• Guideline for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles

– Updated annually– Freely available in more than 20 languages

• Toolkits

– For authors– For Journal editors– For reviewers

News and updates

• Blog

– https://ese-bookshelf.blogspot.com/• Member newsletter

Communities

• Strategy groups

– Gender Policy Committee– Peer Review Committee

• Regional groups

– E.g. Vietnam, Turkish, Croatian, Mexican

Mechanical heart. Wellcome Trust photographic Awards, 2009

EDITORS … At the heart of the matter

THE LANDSCAPE

World growth

of articles

(indexed in

Scopus, all

topics)

193%

Don’t believe the numbers:

INDICATIVE ONLY

World growth

of articles

(indexed in

Scopus, all

topics)

193%

Unforeseen consequences

• What happens in a period of rapid growth and new players?

• New journals

– Maybe fake– Maybe naïve or

misleading• Tsunami of poor quality?

– Or opportunity for LIC authors?

15

16

More oversight …

Changing the publishing workflow?

18

The shape of journals … ?

• The standard journal still alive and kicking!

• New journals

– Megajournals – e.g. PLOS ONE– Overlay journals – e.g. Discrete Analysis– Community journals – e.g. Frontiers– Instant publishing – e.g. F1000Research

– New quality assurance experiments, new technologies, new formats … ??

19

Is the traditional article sufficient?

20

Data sharing

21

The business of publishing

• Who pays?

• Who benefits?

– Societal benefits?– Financial benefits?

– Drive away from closed access business models• To open access models

23

Plan S

• European initiative

– Supported by >13 funders• Requirements of grantees

– OA, CC BY, at point of publication• Either in “compliant” OA journal

– Not hybrid, must be DOAJ indexed• Or in recognised repository• Grant funds pay for APC• Authors must retain copyright

• Unforeseen consequences … ??

24

Copyright confusions

• Free to view does not mean free to re-use !

• Confusion over usage rights

• Authors don’t understand CCBY

• Do editors understand?

Publishers accumulating

3101

2600 2599

1523

1100

450 380

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

Springer T&F Elsevier Wiley SAGE OUP CUP

2009 2017

Approximate numbers only!

New models

• Read-and-publish

– Wiley and Germany– CUP and California– “Pay to access and publish your own content OA

(with no fee)”

• New services

– Elsevier purchase Aries (Editorial Manager)– Wiley purchase Atypon (publishing platform)– Springer own Digital Science (Altmetric, etc.)

The changing the role of journals?

• Gatekeepers or access enablers?

– Relationship with repositories?• What is the future of the “smaller” journals?

– Financial sustainability?• How to respond to output growth?

– Accept more?• How to ensure quality?

– (And what is quality anyway?)

28

So much going on

• Many changes …

– Time to change, space for experiments

• Key:

– Quality assurance, trust, reliability

So much going on

• Many changes …

– Time to change, space for experiments

• Key:

– Quality assurance, trust, reliability

Thank you for listening!