The changing face of scientific publishing

Many think scientific publishing is reaching a crucial point and must evolve. But how to increase speed and maintain peer-review quality?  Dr John Hammersley thinks he knows the answer… In many respects scientific publishing is like any other form of publishing. It serves the dual purpose of communicating the author’s ideas, findings and experiences to a wider audience, and through the reaction to these writings, enhances his or her reputation in that field. But the benefits of scientific publishing go far beyond science – most of the world’s technical and medical innovations began with a scientific paper, and in a society increasingly looking to science for solutions to today’s most pressing social challenges, it’s important that scientific publishing itself evolves to take advantage of the developments and innovations science has made possible. What has changed? In (very) simple terms, ‘the Internet happened’. The penetration of the internet into every aspect of life, including homes, schools, libraries, universities and research centres worldwide means that scientific communication is now faster, easier, and more efficient than at any time in the past. It has made the dissemination of scientific ideas, through scientific papers and their associated presentations and media articles, almost instantaneous. However, this sits ill at ease with the tradition in modern day science for pre-publication peer review by an expert panel, prior to wider release. When combined with often onerous formatting requirements, the time from writing to publication is far from instantaneous, leaving scientists torn between the desire to disseminate their ideas quickly, to help foster discussion and follow on research, and the need for publication in a ‘top journal’ to help support their next funding application. What is a top journal? For the last 40 years, any ranking system has been primarily based upon by the Impact Factor of the academic journal. The impact factor is simply defined – it is a measure which reflects the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. Although this measure is often subject to criticism (and indeed led to the boycott of ‘luxury journals’ by Nobel prize-winner Randy Schekman in the latter part of 2013), it has yet to be superseded by an alternative. One approach which is helping to force the issue is the major rise of Open Access publishing, with 2013 seeing mandates from  several countries (including the UK and the US) requiring the results of publicly funded research be made available to the public free of charge. Although a definitive form of Open Access is still to be fixed upon (‘Green’ and ‘Gold’ OA are the two current proposals), the basic idea – of preventing scientific research being locked away behind paywalls – represents a key paradigm shift from current subscription-based models. Can open access fit with peer review? Novel solutions are emerging, with journals such as F1000Research offering a post-publication peer review service – in this model, your article is published relatively quickly (usually within a week) after undergoing editorial checks, with peer reviews following afterwards. There are also other models more complementary to the traditional journal publication process. In my own field of mathematical physics, a solution has been around for a long time, namely the arXiv. The arXiv is a free, open repository for papers which are published online the day after they are submitted. Crucially, the arXiv is highly regarded by those working in the fields it covers (it was always the first place I would check for new research), and this encourages scientists to deposit their work there. Papers published online in the arXiv can then be submitted to a journal in the usual way, and the author receives the benefits of instant publication (in my case, this led to an invitation to speak at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, and stimulated some follow up work), alongside the more formal recognition of a peer-reviewed publication.

With open access, the authors pay for their work to be published and made available free to the reader – suddenly, the publisher needs to be attractive to the authors, not just the readers, as the authors are now the customers.

Some journals forbid the publication of pre-prints; an unhelpful practice which denies authors this opportunity to combine the benefits of the quick dissemination of ideas with journal publication at a later date. Open Access journals could be the solution to this – essentially the post-publication peer review model provides rapid access to a ‘pre-print’ which goes on to be peer-reviewed – but at the risk of dismantling the validation framework that peer review provides. However flawed the existing system may be, the management of peer review is not a simple task. One element I’ve felt has always been missing is a common platform for writers, readers, editors, and reviewers to collaborate together – we’ve created a process which requires a huge chain of emails (and files passing between multiple systems) before agreement can be reached between all parties – something which contributes to the delays in the publication of a peer-reviewed article. Many solutions are emerging to tackle this, developed by both publishers and scientists (in many cases working together), and the next few years look set to transform the publishing processes as the cloud-based nature of services brings together the writers, readers, editors, and reviewers. One reason for this change is that the rise of open access has put authors at the focus of scientific publishing, rather than (solely) the reader. In traditional, subscription based models, the onus on publishers was to provide high quality material for their readers, as that ensured their journal subscriptions would be renewed. With open access, the authors (or their institutions) pay for their work to be published and made available free to the reader – suddenly, the publisher needs to be attractive to the authors, not just the readers, as the authors are now the customers. This is why I believe 2014 will be a transformational year for scientific publishing – this focus on authors switches the industry’s attention to the author’s needs, offering a dramatic shift in power which we can use to drive change for the better. Journals and other publishing platforms offering the best services for authors will pick up an increasing share of submissions – the highest ranking journals will still continue due to their current rankings, but the rest is up for grabs. Provided we can find an effective solution which combines peer review with rapid publication – which I believe we are already seeing the prototypes for – the days of waiting over a year for your article to emerge from the depths of traditional peer review look set to be consigned to the history books. Author Dr John Hammersley, Co-founder and CEO of writeLaTeX.