PROFESSIONAL & ACADEMIC PUBLISHING
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Reviewer 3: This paper is pretty good but the reference list needs some work. The author missed these 35 super important papers in the field! Recommend accepting the paper pending the addition of these very important references. (The fact that I appear as an author on most of these 35 papers is purely a coincidence.)
This really happens! It is thankfully rare, but apparently there are a few hundred such reviewers where something like this is standard reviewing procedure (though we note that a 2012 study by Wilhite & Fong published in Science found even more widespread evidence of citation coercion by reviewers so maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg). This citation coercion by reviewers was discovered by Elsevier analytics experts Jeroen Baas and Catriona Fennell, who analyzed the peer-review activity of academics who review for Elsevier journals. Here is a link to their SSRN preprint with the wonderful click-bait title (we recommend clicking!): “When peer reviewers go rogue—estimated prevalence of citation manipulation by reviewers based on the citation patterns of 69,000 reviewers.”
Source: Nature, Science, SSRN
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Cabells now includes over 12,000 journals on their Blacklist of predatory and fraudulent titles.
Source: The Source (Cabells' blog)
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GeoScienceWorld (GSW) announced the acquisition of Lithosphere, a journal formerly published by the Geological Society of America (GSA). GSW plans to expand the scope of the open access publication, turning Lithosphere into a multidisciplinary community journal in partnership with seven geoscience societies (additional societies may join in the future). Lithosphere will accept papers both directly and via referrals from participating society journals. A revenue share model provides an incentive for referring papers while also returning revenues to the participating societies associated with direct submissions to the journal. GSW has for many years provided a means for societies to build economies of scale around institutional marketing and sales as well as technology; Lithosphere marks an editorial extension of this strategy. We will be following the results of this initiative with interest. (Note: C&E were advisers to GSW on the acquisition of Lithosphere and the design of the community journal financial model.)
Source: EurekAlert!, Lithosphere
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Remember when open access “megajournals” were going to take over the world? It hasn’t turned out that way. A big part of the reason, ironically, may be the very success of the model’s pioneer. PLOS ONE was so successful early on that others copied it. Now there are more multidisciplinary journals (e.g., Scientific Reports) as well as broad disciplinary journals like IEEE Access and BMJ Open. There are also more selective multidisciplinary journals like Nature Communications and Science Advances. Collectively, megajournals publish only about 3% of global output (depending on how they are defined; the definition used by Science is narrow). Substantive, to be sure, but not anywhere close to the market share predicted by early proponents.
Source: Science
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Atypon Systems, a unit of Wiley, has announced the release of a new workflow tool called Scitrus. Scitrus is an AI-enabled “push” service that provides users with a personalized and adaptive feed of scientific and scholarly articles. This product launch comes on the heels of the release of research by Elsevier and Sense about Science that found that researchers spend a huge amount of time on search and discovery, implying that the market for enhanced search tools is just getting started. We note that Scitrus (along with Manuscripts) is part of a broader portfolio of research workflow tools under development at Atypon. Scritus is usefully viewed in the context of Wiley’s competition with other large STM information companies, in particular Elsevier, Digital Science, and Clarivate Analytics. We expect to see more rivals to Scitrus emerge in the months ahead.
Source: Atypon, Elsevier
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Speaking of Clarivate Analytics, Annette Thomas abruptly departed her role as President of the Science Group at the company. Samantha Burridge, VP for Strategy and Transformation, departed as well. Thomas’s tenure at the company was relatively brief and her departure is surprising, coming so soon after Clarivate’s public listing and a major restructuring in which she assumed additional responsibilities. Mukhtar Ahmed has assumed Thomas’s old role.
Source: Clarivate Analytics, The Scholarly Kitchen
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The International Association for Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) announced that Ian Moss will serve as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer starting in December 2019. Moss will replace Michael Mabe, who is retiring after a tenure of nearly 14 years leading the association. Moss comes to STM from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), where he worked with members to "navigate the recorded music industry’s fundamental reinvention as a result of digital rights and evolving formats for music delivery." Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Source: The International Association for Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers
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Consortia keep getting bigger, especially in Europe. Acquisition of scientific and scholarly journal packages continued to move to national-level consortia (as documented in the 2019 EUA Big Deals Survey Report which we have mentioned previously in The Brief). But is the national Big Deal big enough? According to Carlos Moedas, the outgoing European commissioner for research, science and innovation, the answer is no. Moedas indicated in an interview with Times Higher Education that “the main frustration of his term had been that he 'never really got a full mandate… from the member states, to negotiate [at the EU level] with the publishers.'”
Source: European University Association, Times Higher Education
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Is the “platform” the best frame through which to examine the role of journals today? This is the argument made by the editors at Nature Physics, who (following Michael’s typology, which they cite) examine what journals do. They show that many functions are served by established or emerging platforms. Preprint servers, for example, provide the role of registration. Emerging experiments in peer review might disaggregate the function of validation. The role of designation, however, remains stubbornly enmeshed with the journal:
The relentless focus on scientists’ publication record in career advancement decisions has led to the unintended consequence that, in effect, academics have outsourced the allocation of resources such as jobs and funding to journals. This development requires a much more honest debate, one that doesn’t project scientists’ own frustrations onto the related, but distinct problem of creating a sustainable publishing ecosystem. But before we disaggregate all of the functions of journals, the Nature Physics editors ask whether the journal might remain a good platform for aggregating different services and functions for different constituencies (which is what platforms do so well)? Being journal editors, they are of course biased. But that doesn’t make them wrong.
Source: Nature Physics
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Do we need article badges?
Source: STAT
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The Society Publishers Accelerating Open Access and Plan S (SPA-OPS) report has been released. Commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, UKRI, and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the much anticipated report was authored by Information Power Ltd. Its aim was to “undertake a project to support society publishers to accelerate their transition to Open Access (OA) in alignment with Plan S and the wider move to accelerate immediate OA.” The report provides a roundup of business models presently in use (to a greater or lesser extent) by society publishers.
Accompanying the report is a series of contract templates and tips that are designed, as Science puts it, “to help small, independent publishers reach deals with libraries that would eventually eliminate subscriptions while protecting revenue.” While it is helpful to have such materials, the real barriers to societies inking transformative agreements are more fundamental: such deals require a great deal of data analysis and a significant amount of negotiating time (many societies lack the resources for either the analysis or the negotiation). Beyond this, as Michael noted in an interview with Jeffrey Brainard at Science, “It makes no sense for a library consortium to spend any time negotiating an agreement with a publisher [their faculty] don’t publish a lot of content with.”
Five of the societies and four library consortia involved in the SPA-OPS project will be attempting to overcome these structural challenges by exploring options for transformative agreements together in coming months. We look forward to hearing the outcome of these discussions.
Source: ALPSP, Science
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We have previously mentioned in The Brief that the American Astronomical Society had acquired Sky & Telescope magazine. Now AAS’s Executive Director Kevin Marvel has written up an account of the internal workings at AAS that resulted in the acquisition. This is an instructive case study for any society that is exploring nontraditional business development. Dr. Marvel summarizes how the acquisition came about and the all-important process by which the AAS board was persuaded to take this project on. (Note: C&E served as advisers to AAS on this acquisition.)
Source: The Scholarly Kitchen
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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced a new bioRxiv pilot (powered by hypothes.is) called Transparent Review in Preprints (TRiP). TRiP allows groups to manage peer review of papers posted to bioRxiv. Participating organizations will be able to “post peer reviews in dedicated Hypothesis groups alongside relevant preprints on the bioRxiv website.” This initiative brings together the concept of an overlay journal with that of an extra-journal peer review service (and indeed, two extra-journal peer review services, Peerage of Science and the newly formed Review Commons, plan to participate). We look forward to hearing more about this TRiPy pilot.
Source: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, YouTube
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Knowledge Exchange, in collaboration with Research Consulting, has released a report titled “Accelerating Scholarly Communication: The Transformative Role of Preprints.” Authored by Andrea Chiarelli, Rob Johnson, Emma Richens, and Stephen Pinfield, the report documents the state of preprints in 2019. It includes a comprehensive literature review, a roundup of preprint archives, and reporting on original qualitative research. The report is worthwhile for the reference list alone. It also provides a thoughtful framing of the different types of preprint servers, how preprints fit into the scholarly workflow, and challenges to broader adoption. The research interviews reported on throughout the report provide useful context and color. We have some quibbles with the report. For example, concerns about preprints being used by journalists in reporting are largely dismissed. The section on licensing is also a missed opportunity for a more in-depth and nuanced exploration of the intellectual property issues relevant to both authors and publishers (for example, when a preprint bears one Creative Commons license and the final published work does not bear a CC license or uses a different one). But all-in-all, it is an important report that will serve as a helpful reference for years to come for those working in scholarly communication.
Source: Knowledge Exchange
HIGHER EDUCATION
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Joe first wrote about the Open Syllabus Project at its launch three-and-a-half years ago, but we are now pleased to see its latest iteration, rechristened Open Syllabus Explorer. This is a promising tool built atop a unique collection of information. The creators of OSE have developed a database of college syllabi (or syllabuses, if you prefer) that enables search for books, authors, publishers, and more. This can be a very useful teaching tool, as an instructor can learn how other instructors elsewhere pair titles. It’s interesting to note that The Great Gatsby appears on 2,949 syllabi and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on 3,232, but particularly useful to see Fitzgerald paired with Twain, Hurston, Ellison, and Chopin, whereas Kuhn’s work is often taught along with works by Popper, Foucault, and Lakatos. Naturally, vanity searches can be rewarding. The database also gives rise to a new kind of impact factor, not of the number of citations to a journal over a particular period of time but the number of courses that use a particular text—Classroom Impact Factor, if you will. We are following this project closely and suspect that new uses will be teased out of the database over time. We would like to see the syllabi for individual courses, enabling targeted marketing by college publishers.
Source: Harzing.com, EdSurge, The New York Times, Open Syllabus Project, The Scholarly Kitchen, First Monday
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The State of New Mexico has announced its public colleges will become tuition-free for all state residents. Given the escalating costs of tuition at US colleges and universities, this is a landmark announcement. While many states offer free tuition on a needs-tested basis, New Mexico is the first to offer free tuition to all state residents. The policy will apply to all of the state’s 29 two- and four-year public colleges.
Source: The New York Times
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Janet Napolitano has announced her resignation as president of the University of California.
Source: InsideHigherEd
THE BOOK BUSINESS
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Oxford University Press teamed up with its sometime rival Cambridge University Press for a research project on the academic monograph. The findings from that project have just been published. It makes for instructive reading, partly because of the care that went into the survey, but also because the number of respondents (just shy of 5,000) is large enough to invite extrapolations to the community as a whole. Among other things the researchers learned that despite so much negative news about monographs, they are highly valued by the communities they serve. Indeed, the respondents found it hard even to think about a world without monographs. This was especially true in the humanities but also true for the social sciences (STEM fields place a lower value on monographs). Among the virtues of the monograph is the ability to explore a topic in depth and with context. Such books are viewed as essential for communications in the field, but they also are valued for the very process of writing one, which provides focus and professional development for their authors. One intriguing finding is that most readers engaged with monographs on the chapter level, not with the aim of reading a book from cover to cover. This has important business implications, as it implies that free sample chapters are a poor way to market monographs since scholars don’t always plan to read more than that amount, a point we asserted a few years ago. Another nagging question is why, if the monograph is so important, are there not robust monograph sales directly to scholars and a great amount of usage in library collections? In the end the sale or its lack make or break the case for the monograph, excellent scholar surveys notwithstanding.
Source: Oxford University Press, The Scholarly Kitchen
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Calling it “a Sputnik moment,” The Economist reports that the quantum computing division of Google has achieved “quantum supremacy,” the ability to make computations beyond the scope of “mere” superfast supercomputers. The numbers are staggering: “The quantum computer's processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM's Summit, the world's most powerful commercial computer.” Naturally, the announcement immediately met with a great deal of skepticism (other computers have done this before, quantum supremacy is a bad term to describe the capability, the success was only on a narrow field of inquiry, etc.), to which we editorialize: Bears always sound smarter. A different kind of objection is to ask, But what is it good for? It may very well be that the answer to that question is that it is only by having such a powerful machine at our disposal will we be able to frame a new set of questions that only that powerful machine can help to answer. For anyone who wants to understand the background on this effort and how to measure the achievement, a good place to get an overview is over at Shtetl-Optimized, Scott Aaronson’s blog, which includes an FAQ. One interesting tidbit (since this is a publishing and communications newsletter): the reason we know about this at all is that an early draft of a paper (presumably now in the hands of an editor at Nature or Science) was inadvertently posted briefly to an open NASA website by one of the collaborators (oops!). Aaronson, by the way, thinks Google’s achievement is huge.
Source: The Economist, C/Net, Wired, Shtetl-Optimized
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Sixty science, engineering, and educational organizations sent a letter to the heads of US science agencies expressing concern that new policies and procedures under consideration by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that are aimed at minimizing national security risks may have the unintended consequence of reducing international collaboration and the ability to attract researchers to the US from other nations.
Source: Agronomy.org, Office of Science and Technology Policy
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Before the dust has even had a chance to settle on the Epstein funding scandal that resulted in the resignation of (now former) director Joi Ito, the Lab finds itself in the midst of another imbroglio—this time involving allegedly fraudulent technology. At the center of the controversy is a device called a “personal food computer” that purports to grow crops easily in a small hydroponic chamber. The problem, according to researchers who worked on the project, is that it doesn’t work. A second problem is that it has been pitched to funders and the media as if it worked (by, for example, placing plants purchased from a local store in the device for funder visits). A third problem is that even if it did work there appears to be little novel about the device; similar technology (that does actually work) has been in commercial use for decades. Here is a thoroughly entertaining Twitter-thread by crop scientist (and podcaster) Sarah Taber that discusses the disconnect between the work at the Media Lab and the field of agricultural engineering.
Source: Business Insider, The New York Times, @SarahTaber_bww
MISCELLANY
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Cormac McCarthy has apparently been moonlighting as an editor of scientific books and journal articles. From Nature:
For the past two decades, Cormac McCarthy—whose ten novels include The Road, No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian—has provided extensive editing to numerous faculty members and postdocs at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico.
Now that is an author service! So you could get a colleague or maybe one of the editorial services companies to help you spruce up your paper—or you could send it to one of the world’s most acclaimed writers. McCarthy has some excellent tips for science writing. These include: - Avoid placing equations in the middle of sentences. Mathematics is not the same as English, and we shouldn’t pretend it is.
- Inject questions and less-formal language to break up tone and maintain a friendly feeling.
- Don’t worry too much about readers who want to find a way to argue about every tangential point and list all possible qualifications for every statement.
- Set the scene for all scientific experiments in a post-apocalyptic landscape or a semi-mythical borderland and use language reminiscent of the King James Bible to describe your findings.
OK, we made that last one up but you could maybe see it happening with McCarthy! Can we run The Brief by McCarthy before it goes out? Read the whole thing.
Source: Nature
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Libraries continue to expand their services. One library now lets you check out therapy dogs.
Source: CBC News
FROM OUR OWN PENS
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Lisa Hinchliffe and Michael Clarke propose the development of a new “meta journal look-up service” that would provide a quick and easy way for authors, editors, reviewers, and readers to know whether articles cited in reference lists were published in journals that appear on industry whitelists (e.g., MEDLINE, Web of Science, DOAJ) or blacklists (e.g., Cabells Blacklist). The aim of this proposed service is to help keep citations to predatory and fraudulent journals (of which there are now over 12,000!) from polluting the scholarly literature.
Source: The Scholarly Kitchen
MEETINGS & EVENTS
We will be attending the following events. Let us know if you would like to set up some time to chat. We’d love to hear from you (in...@ce-strategy.com). - STM Frankfurt, October 15, 2019, Frankfurt, Germany
- The Frankfurt Book Fair, October 16–17, 2019, Frankfurt, Germany
- The Charleston Conference, November 4–8, 2019, Charleston, SC
- Academic Publishing in Europe, January 14–15, 2020, Berlin, Germany
*** The world is a book and those that do not travel read only a page. ― Saint Augustine |
