What is wrong with scholarly publishing today?

Björn Brembs, Freie Universität Berlinhttp://brembs.net

http://www.slideshare.net/brembs/whats-wrong-with-scholarly-publishing-today-ii

Publishing yesterday…

1665: One journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Henry Oldenburg)

Publishing Today• 24,000 scholarly journals• 1.5 million publications/year• 3% annual growth• 1 million authors• 10-15 million readers at >10,000

institutions• 1.5 billion downloads/yearSource: Mabe MA (2009): Scholarly Publishing. European Review 17(1): 3-22

FUNCTIONALITY

19th century publishing for a 21st century scientific community

Functionality

At least four different search tools to be sure not to miss any relevant

literature?

Functionality

When we finally find the literature, we have to ask friends with rich libraries to

send it to us?

Functionality

We have to re-format our manuscripts every time an ex-scientist tells us to

submit to another journal?

Functionality

We have to re-format our manuscripts every time an ex-scientist tells us to

submit to another journal?

Functionality

Every homepage has had an access counter since 1993 but we don’t know

how often our paper has been downloaded?

Functionality

Nothing happens when we click on the reference after "we performed the

experiments as described previously"?

Hyperlinks

Nothing happens when we click on the reference after "we performed the

experiments as described previously"?

First demonstration: 1968 WWW: 1989

Stanford Research Institute: NLS Tim Berners-Lee: CERN

Think…

WHY?

Who‘s to blame that our publishing system is so lame?

We, the scientists!

We decide how and where to publish

We, the scientists!

We are producers and consumers in personal union

We, the scientists!

We chose to outsource scientific communication to publishers

PUBLISHERS

A public good in private hands

Elsevier

• Name from Dutch publisher (1580): “House of Elzevir”

• 250,000 articles per year in 2000 journals

• 7,000 journal editors, 70,000 editorial board members and 300,000 reviewers are working for Elsevier

• Part of Reed Elsevier group

Elsevier

Elsevier

Rofecoxib=Vioxx (Merck)

Elsevier

“Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of [Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine], a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles—most of which presented data favorable to Merck products—that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.”“It was a stealth marketing campaign to Australian doctors under the guise of a regular journal. “

The Scientist

“In issue 2, for example, 9 of the 29 articles were about Vioxx, and 12 of the remaining were about another Merck drug, Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions, and some were bizarre: like a review article containing just 2 references. “

Ben Goldacre, “Bad Science” The Guardian

“It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.”

Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division

Elsevier

“Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of [Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine], a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles—most of which presented data favorable to Merck products—that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.”“It was a stealth marketing campaign to Australian doctors under the guise of a regular journal. “

The Scientist

“In issue 2, for example, 9 of the 29 articles were about Vioxx, and 12 of the remaining were about another Merck drug, Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions, and some were bizarre: like a review article containing just 2 references. “

Ben Goldacre, “Bad Science” The Guardian

“It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.”

Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division

Elsevier

“Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of [Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine], a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles—most of which presented data favorable to Merck products—that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.”“It was a stealth marketing campaign to Australian doctors under the guise of a regular journal. “

The Scientist

“In issue 2, for example, 9 of the 29 articles were about Vioxx, and 12 of the remaining were about another Merck drug, Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions, and some were bizarre: like a review article containing just 2 references. “

Ben Goldacre, “Bad Science” The Guardian

“It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.”

Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division

Elsevier

“Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of [Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine], a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles—most of which presented data favorable to Merck products—that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.”“It was a stealth marketing campaign to Australian doctors under the guise of a regular journal. “

The Scientist

“In issue 2, for example, 9 of the 29 articles were about Vioxx, and 12 of the remaining were about another Merck drug, Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions, and some were bizarre: like a review article containing just 2 references. “

Ben Goldacre, “Bad Science” The Guardian

“It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.”

Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division

The Big Three (2009/10)Employees Sales Net income Growth

57,900 $13B $1B 7.6%

33,300 $10B $0.6B 9.4%

19,030 $5B $0.5B 125.7%(includes Springer)

http://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/000/127-1.pdf

Source:

Profits

Journals Crisis (not just Elsevier!)

Modified from ARL: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlstats06.pdf, http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlstat08.pdf

% C

hang

e

19861987

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19901991

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19941995

19961997

19981999

20002001

20022003

20042005

20062007

2008-50

0

50

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150

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250

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Subscription pricesCPI/inflationJournals purchased

Subscription Pricing

KIT Library10 Most expensive journal subscriptions 2010/11

Journal Price [€/a] PublisherBiochimica et Biophysica Acta 19,130.53 ElsevierChemical Physics Letters 15,577.06 ElsevierJournal of Organometallic Chemistry 13,664.97 ElsevierJournal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 13,381.07 SpringerNuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research / A 11,958.32 ElsevierSurface Science 11,796.75 ElsevierInorganica Chimica Acta 10,703.21 ElsevierJournal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 10,692.75 ElsevierJournal of Coordination Chemistry 10,314.92 Taylor & FrancisJournal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 10,047.30 ElsevierTotal top ten: 127,266.88

http://www.bibliothek.kit.edu/cms/teuerste-zeitschriften.php

Subscription PricingDiscipline Average Yearly Rate Per Title (US$)Chemistry 3,792Physics 3,368Biology 2,035Engineering 1,925Astronomy 1,921Botany 1,695Geology 1,607Math & Computer Science 1,541Zoology 1,532Food Science 1,530Health Sciences 1,398General Science 1,287Technology 1,237Agriculture 1,110Geography 1,094

SOURCE: LJ PERIODICALS PRICE SURVEY 2010

Subscription Pricing

MPG: 18 Mio €/y for literature. 95% to the three main publishers.

UK: 94.6 Mio £/y in subscription (2003/4)

What a magnificent ship! What makes it go?

Cartoon by Rowland B. Wilson

Library responses

• Request increased budgets

• Cut subscriptions• Collective purchase of

electronic journals• Rely on document

delivery or ILL• UC: boycott NPG!

Ray English

Scientific Publishing:

Survey: Journal Access

David Nicholas

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

lot worseworse same

better

much better

Compared to now, was journal access 5 years ago…

Publishing yesterday…

Scholarship as a Public Good

Funded by Taxpayers

Scholarship as a Public Good

Supported publicly

Scholarship as a Public Good

Created in the non-profit sector

Scholarship as a Public Good

No profit for article authors

Scholarship as a Public Good

Profit for corporate publishers

Scholarship

A Public Good in Private Hands

Scientific Publishing:

Think…

ONE SOLUTION: OPEN ACCESS

“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”

Peter Suber

Open Access

Gold OAPublishing in an Open Access journal

Currently 6722 peer-reviewed open access journals listed in the Lund Directory of Open Access Journals doaj.org

Green OASelf-archiving in an institutional repository or PubMed Central

Over 1400 open repositories already established world-wide

DigitalYesterday TodayPaper Bits and bytesBrick and mortar libraries CyberspaceInstitute library address Uniform resource identifiers (URIs)High cost of printing and distribution Publishing costs fallen by orders of

magnitude

Only comprehensible to a few humans Read and indexed by machines (e.g., Googlebot)

Restricted access to a few subscribers Increasingly public

But: Everything’s Gone Digital!

www.scopus.com

www.pubmed.gov

http://ukpmc.ac.uk

isiknowledge.com

scholar.google.com

Duncan Hull

Welcome to Digital

Isolationdifferent disciplines – different information silos

Welcome to Digital

Impersonal and unsociable“who the hell are you”?Where are “my” papers?

What are my friends and colleagues reading?What are the experts reading?

What is popular this week / month / year?

Welcome to Digital

Obsolete models of publicationNot everything fits publication-sized holes

Micro-attributionMega-attribution

Digital contributions (databases, software, wikis/blogs?)

Welcome to Digital

ColdIdentity of publications and authors is

inadequate

OPEN ACCESS

Identity CrisisHow can I find anything?

Identity Crisis: Which publication?

1. http://pubmed.gov/18974831 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/189748313. http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articlerender.cgi?accid=pmcA25688564. http://ukpmc.ac.uk/picrender.cgi?artid=1687256&blobtype=pdf 5. http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000204 6. http://www.dbkgroup.org/Papers/hull_defrost_ploscb08.pdf 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204

• One paper, many URIs. Disambiguation algorithms rely on getting metadata for each– Big problem for libraries is these redundant duplicates

• Matching can be done by Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and PubMed ID (PMID); – these are frequently absent < 5% (Kevin Emamy, citeUlike)

Duncan Hull

Identity Crisis: Which author?

Identity Crisis: Which topic?

Think…

One solution: Unique identifiers

Difficult with fragmented information silos

One solution: Unique identifiers

Several initiatives

One solution: Unique identifiers

Examples: PubMedID, DOI, ORCID, Semantic Web

ORCID

Semantic Web

• Machine-readable meaning• Technically non-trivial• Promising progress

Tim Berners-Leehttp://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/Overview.html

The Semantic Web for Dummies (like me)

URI Uniform Resource Identifier, like:http://id.archeology.edu/weapon/spear

+ XML Customized tags, like: <spear>Lance</spear>

+ RDF Relations, in triples, like: (Lance) (is_spear_of) (Longinus)

+ Ontologies Hierarchies of concepts, like weapon -> projectile -> spear-> Lance

+ Inference rules Like: If (person) (owns) (spear), then (person) (throws) (spear)

= Semantic Web!

DIGITAL DYSTOPIA

Information (Overload) Crisis

Or filter failure?

More scientists, more publications

Information Crisis

1.5 million publications per year in 24,000 journals

Information Crisis

Finding ‘my’ publications is impossible!

Information Crisis

Publish or Perish: number of publications

Information Crisis

60-300 applicants per tenure-track position

Information Crisis

Reading enough publications is impossible!

Think…

One solution: JournalRank

• Thomson Reuters: Impact Factor• Eigenfactor (now Thomson Reuters)• ScImago JournalRank (SJR)• Scopus: SNIP, SJR

Source Normalized Impact per Paper

One solution: JournalRank

Only read publications from high-ranking journals

Job applications

Job application instructionsPublikationstätigkeit(vollständige Publikationsliste, darunter Originalarbeiten als Erstautor/in, Seniorautor/in, Impact-Punkte insgesamt und in den letzten 5 Jahren, darunter jeweils gesondert ausgewiesen als Erst- und Seniorautor/in, persönlicher Scientific Citations Index (SCI, h-Index nach Web of Science) über alle Arbeiten)

Publications:Complete list of publications, including original research papers as first author, senior author, impact points total and in the last 5 years, with marked first and last-authorships, personal Scientific Citations Index (SCI, h-Index according to Web of Science) for all publications.

METRICS

Lies, damn lies and bibliometrics

Show of hands:

• Who knows what the IF is?• Who uses the IF to pick a journal

(rate a candidate, etc.)?• Who knows how the IF is calculated

and from what data?

The Impact Factor

Introduced in 1960’s by Eugene Garfield: ISI

2008 and 20092010

IF=5Articles published in 08/09

were cited an average of 5 times in 10.

citations articles

The Impact Factor

Journal X IF 2010=

All citations from TR indexed journals in 2010 to papers in journal X

Number of citable articles published in journal X in 2008/9

€30,000-130,000/year subscription ratesCovers ~11,500 journals (Scopus covers ~16,500)

Main Problems with the IF

• Negotiable • Irreproducible • Mathematically

unsound

Negotiable

• PLoS Medicine, IF 2-11 (8.4)(The PLoS Medicine Editors (2006) The Impact Factor Game. PLoS Med 3(6): e291. http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030291)

• Current Biology IF from 7 to 11 in 2003– Bought by Cell Press (Elsevier) in 2001…

Not Reproducible• Rockefeller University Press bought their

data from Thomson Reuters• Up to 19% deviation from published records• Second dataset still not correct

Rossner M, van Epps H, Hill E (2007): Show me the data. The Journal of Cell Biology, Vol. 179, No. 6, 1091-1092 http://jcb.rupress.org/cgi/content/full/179/6/1091

Not Mathematically Sound• Left-skewed distributions• Weak correlation of individual article citation

rate with journal IF

Seglen PO (1997): Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ 1997;314(7079):497 (15 February)http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/314/7079/497

LORD KELVIN

“Nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement”

Job applications

MESSAGE:

Where you publish is more important to us than what you publish!

Think…

Other solution: social bookmarks

mendeley.com

zotero.org

connotea.org

www.mekentosj.com

hubmed.org

Re-couple metadata that has be de-coupled from data

2collab.com

refworks.com

“iTunes for PDF files”

citeulike.org

Article-level Metrics

Your article:• Received X citations (de-duped from Google Scholar,

Scopus, and Web of Science)• It was viewed X times, placing it in the top Y% of all

articles in this journal/community• It received X Comments• It was bookmarked X times in Social Bookmarking sites• Experts in your community rated it as X, Y, Z• It was discussed on X ‘respected’ blogs • It appeared in X, Y, Z International News media

Peter Binfield

PLoS ONE• 4.5 years old• Almost doubling in volume each year– 2007: 1,231 articles– 2008: 2,722 articles– 2009: 4,310 articles– 2010: 6,784 articles– 2011: >12,000 articles

• Largest journal in the world• Over 1,000 Academic editors• More than 30,000 authors• Fully peer reviewed – but the review / acceptance process does not concern

itself with ‘impact’, ‘novelty’ (or other subjective measures)

Q1 2007

Q2 2007

Q3 2007

Q4 2007

Q1 2008

Q2 2008

Q3 2008

Q4 2008

Q1 2009

Q2 2009

Q3 2009

Q4 2009

Q1 2010

Q2 2010

Q3 2010

Q4 2010

Q1 2011

Q2 20110

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter since launch

ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Metrics

• Won‘t go away

• Should always be a last resort

• They are much too valuable to be satisfied with the current pitiful state of affairs

• Let‘s make them as good as we possibly can!

My Digital Utopia:• No more publishers – libraries archive everything according

to a world-wide standard• Single semantic, decentralized database of literature and

data• Personalized filtering• Peer-review administrated by an independent body• Link typology for text/text, data/data and text/data links

(“citations”)• Semantic Text/Datamining• All the metrics you (don’t) want (but need)• Tagging, bookmarking, etc.• Unique contributor IDs with attribution/reputation system

(teaching, reviewing, curating, blogging, etc.)• Technically feasible today (almost)

http://www.slideshare.net/brembs/whats-wrong-with-scholarly-publishing-today-ii