The story of Academic Publishing: from Galileo to Nature
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These are the slides of a talk I gave to the Young Research Meeting 2019 in Tor Vergata. I briefly presented the story of academic publishing, from the first journals to the modern publication system, passing through open access, impact factor, etc… I showed how big publishers are making a lot of money thanks to the free work of scientists, that in search for prestige support high-impact-factor journals. Finally, I presented valid alternatives to the present commercial publishing system, and invite people to use them.
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The story of Academic Publishing: from Galileo to Nature
- 4. Life without scientific journals 2/2 "Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates involvente, fluxiones invenire; et vice versa", which means "Given an equation involving any number of fluent quantities to find the fluxions, and vice versa." “The foundations of these operations is evident enough, in fact; but because I cannot proceed with the explanation of it now, I have preferred to conceal it thus: 6accdae13eff7i3l9n4o4qrr4s8t12ux. On this foundation I have also tried to simplify the theories which concern the squaring of curves, and I have arrived at certain general Theorems.” 6accdae13eff7i3l9n4o4qrr4s8t12ux 2nd letter that Newton wrote to Leibniz (via Oldenburg) in 1677 https://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath414/kmath414.htm Anagram
- 5. The first scientific journals Denis de Sallo (511665) Royal Society (631665) History and the Learned Journal Harcourt Brown Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(3) , pp. 365-378 (1972) Nullius in verba
- 6. Multiple discoveries and priority Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science Robert K. Merton European Journal of Sociology, 4(02) 237 -282 (1963) “Multiple discoveries suggest that discoveries become virtually inevitable when prerequisite kinds of knowledge and tools accumulate in man's cultural store and when the attention of an appreciable number of investigators becomes focussed on a problem, by emerging social needs, by developments internal to the science, or by both.” Scientific journals reduce the “the wasteful duplication of scientific effort” Number of simultaneous discovery ended in dispute: 92% in the 17th century 72% in the 18th century 59% in the latter half of 19th century 33% in the first half of the 20th centuy
- 7. Sociological and psychological effects of scientific publishing Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science Robert K. Merton European Journal of Sociology, 4(02) 237 -282 (1963) The Eureka syndrome when a scientist has made a genuine discovery, he is as happy as a scientist can be. But the peak of exhilaration may only deepen the plunge into despair should the discovery be taken from him. Deep concern with establishing priority. Cryptomnesia (“Unconscious Plagiarism”) referring as it does to seemingly creative thought in which ideas based upon unrecalled past experience are taken to be new. Hamilton: "As to myself, I am sure that I must have often reproduced things which I had read long before, without being able to identify them as belonging to other persons" Enhance the role of genius Multiple discoveries are a measure of the likelihood that the discovery will be promptly caught up in the advancement of science but also for individual discovers. Contrast between heroic theory of science and en environmental theory of science
- 12. Merges and acquisitions ‘You have no idea how profitable these journals are once you stop doing anything. When you’re building a journal, you spend time getting good editorial boards etc.. and then ….. we stop doing all that stuff and then the cash just pours out and you wouldn’t believe how wonderful it is.’ Pierre Vinken, the CEO of Elsevier
- 16. As NATURE became a brand
- 18. Why Scientific Publishing is so profitable? Governments fund scientists Scientists give their results to publishers for free Scientists peer review manuscripts Publishers sell products to libraries A triple pay system Governments fund libraries
- 20. (Gold) Open access is not a solution ● PloS ONE $1350 70% ● Physical Review Letters $2700 35% ● Nature $30k40k 8% ● Publication cost is proportional to impact factor (you can pay to get more visibility) ● Acceptance rate is higher for lower cost
- 22. https://scipost.org/ An idea of Jean-Sébastien Caux
- 25. Other interesting initiatives https://www.fairopenaccess.org/ https://sciencematters.io/articles/140385074186 not just good storytelling (also replications) https://www.chem2.org/ https://quantum-journal.org/
- 26. Curiosity: living without scientific journals Demostration of the Poincaré conjecture by Grigori Perelman "If anybody is interested in my way of solving the problem, it's all there [on the arXiv] –let them go and read about it" https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0211159 Not only Perelman: “The paper is already quite popular and it would do its work as arXiv document. I submitted it to xxxx journal .... that has my full sympathy.” The polymath blog Massively collaborative mathematical projects The 4chan theorem viXra.org open e-Print archive https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem
- 27. Curiosity: most cited papers of all time BIOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES BIOINFORMATICS PHYLOGENETICS STATISTICS CRYSTALLOGRAPHY ● Top paper: 1951-method for quantifying protein in a solution 305.000 citations! ● DNA sequancing method (Nobel) ● Polymerase chain react.(Nobel) ● 1980 genetist Nicoletta Sacchi fast way to extract RNA DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY ● The Kohn papers on DFT ● Different functionals ● Software packages ● Software for analize x-rays patterns, diffranction data etc.. ● List of radii of ions ● Statistical methods for survavial patterns in polulations ● Method to compare data ● Bootstrap method applied to evolution trees ● Method to generate phylogenetic trees ● The Kohn papers on DFT ● Different functionals ● Software packages ● Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (what genes produce a protein) If citations are what you want: devise a method that makes it possible for people to make new experiments or calculations. https://www.nature.com/news/the-top-100-papers-1.16224
- 29. References: ● SciPost, http://scipost.org ● https://www.fairopenaccess.org/ ● Open access: The true cost of science publishing https://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676 ● https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12/got-just-single-observation-new-journal-will-publish-it ● How much does it cost to publish in Open Access? http://blog.scielo.org/en/2013/09/18/how-much-does-it-cost-to-publish-in-open-access/#.WabWThdLeis ● To Open Access or not to Open Access? http://new.amsterdamscience.org/wp-content/uploads/issue_04.pdf ● Giornali ad accesso aperto e giornali per ricercatori ricchi (italian) https://fisiciaroundtheworld.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/giornali-ad-accesso-aperto-e-giornali-per-ricercatori-r ● Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science ● SciELO, http://www.scielo.br/ ● The Truth about China’s Cash-for-Publication Policy https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about-chinas-cash-for-publication-policy/ ● Give researchers a lifetime word limit https://www.nature.com/news/give-researchers-a-lifetime-word-limit-1.22835
Notas del editor
- This is from the 2nd letter that Newton wrote to Leibniz (via Oldenburg) in 1677. He was responding to some questions from Leibniz about his method of infinite series and came close to revealing his "fluxional method" (i.e., calculus), but then decided to conceal it in the form of an anagram. After describing his methods of tangents and handling maxima and minima, he wrote The anagram expresses, in Newton's terminology, the fundamental theorem of the calculus: "Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates involvente, fluxiones invenire; et vice versa", which means "Given an equation involving any number of fluent quantities to find the fluxions, and vice versa." Arranging the characters in his Latin sentence in alphabetical order (and assuming he counted the dipthong "ae" as a separate character, and u's and v's are counted as the same character), the number of occurrences of each character are as follows Ironically, neither Leibniz nor Newton had published anything on calculus at the time this letter was exchanged, although both are believed to have been in possession of the calculus, so if Newton had just come right out with a complete and explicit statement of his calculus he would have placed Leibniz in a very difficult position, and would have established his own priority beyond doubt (since the letter passed through Oldenburg). Instead, Newton's very protectiveness and secrecy caused him to lose whatever unambiguous claim to priority he might have had (and led to an acrimonious priority dispute that embittered both his and Leibniz's later lives). On a very deep level it was natural for Newton to express himselfEven more pointedly, Newton spent many years attempting to interpret the prophesies in the Bible, which he believed were presented in deliberately disguised form so that their meaning could only be inferred by solving them like puzzles. Interestingly, he had disdain for people who tried to unravel prophesies of future events. In his view, this was misguided and doomed to failure. He believed the encoded prophesies were intended to be understood only after the fact.
- Denis de Sallo, Sieur de la Coudraye (1626 – May 14, 1669) was a French writer and lawyer from Paris He made many enymies among men of letters and among the Jesuits. They were not pleased to see a literary and philosophical tribunal that was no set up by them. They secured the aid of the papal nuncio and he obtained the prohibition against De Sallo continiung publications. De Sallo, Parlementarians and Gallicans. Gallicans contestatno autorita papa Colbert sovraintendente alle finanze Colbert anyway help him, suppress the journal and give an office at the treasury. Aveva recrutato vari assistant editor in inghilterra e olanda. Publicavano anche recensioni libri etc.. It was a jour for free discussion a revolution.Deliberate exclusion of these who held to stric doctrines Cartesians and Jeuits
- social relations and affect of men of science. I have tried to show elsewhere (16), for example, how the values and reward-system of science, with their pathogenic emphasis upon originality, help account for certain deviant behaviors of scientists : secretiveness during the early stages of inquiry lest they be forestalled, violent conflicts over priority, an enending flow of premature publications designed to establish later claims to having been first.
- social relations and affect of men of science. I have tried to show elsewhere (16), for example, how the values and reward-system of science, with their pathogenic emphasis upon originality, help account for certain deviant behaviors of scientists : secretiveness during the early stages of inquiry lest they be forestalled, violent conflicts over priority, an enending flow of premature publications designed to establish later claims to having been first. Such studies will probably not create the Olympian mood of a Goethe vigorously reaffirming Ecclesiastes : "No one can take from us the joy of the first becoming aware of something, the so- called discovery. But if we also demand the honor, it can be utterly spoiled for us for we are usually not the first. What does discovery mean, and who can say that he has discovered this or that ? After all, it's pure idiocy to brag about priority; for it's simply unconscious conceit, not to admit frankly that one is a plagiarist" (101). But multiple discoveries can be recognized as
- Report made from St. Andrews univeristy, Imperial Collage, King’s college, Birkbeck univerisity, Art&Umanities research council
- RPI = retail price index (indice dei prezzi al dettaglio)
- 1) No competition the market was always growing, there was space for more and more journals for example “Journal of Nuclear Energy” from rival North Holland “Journal of Nuclear Physics” 2) His fovorite prefix was “Internation Journal of ...” 3) In 1960 he was driving only chauffeured Rolls-Royce, and moved to Oexford 4) “We do not compete on sales we compete on authors” 5) “Scientists are not as price-consious as other processionals, mainly because there are not spending their own money” 6) He was successful because scientists are vain,and he flatter them
- Lwein prized long and rigorous papers that answered big quesitons – ofter representing years of research – and breaking ideas the idea the journals were passive instruments to communicate science, he rejected far more papers thatn he pubblished.
- Sentence of P. Vinken after the acquisition of Pergamon journals.
- EPJ failed project, very bad menagement
- papers are not to be excluded on the basis of lack of perceived importance or adherence to a scientific field. More citations than non-open access papers Critics: Pressure to publish more papers, diminuish the overall quality of scientific journals
- "This is the case of biomedical research, physics, and the arts and humanities. In the case of the arts and humanities, this is explained by the greater number of local books and journals that disseminate research and have transitioned more slowly to digital format. Conversely, more than two thirds of journals in chemistry, psychology, social sciences, and the professional fields are published by one of the major publishers." Unlike most commercial goods academic journals are each unique and cannot be substituted by cheaper alternatives. More mone with online publising: selling acced to bundle of journals: individual articles directly to readers; additional services as statistics, citationsdata mining etc...
- Money goes to shareholdersProfit margin, net margin, net profit margin or net profit ratio is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the net profit as a percentage of the revenue
- In a traditional market suppliers are paid for the goods they provide Cost of additional contents as editorials, commentary, and journalism
- Different call for OpenScience from Europe and other countries Publicly funded research output to be open access
- The first 500 submissions will be free. After that, Matters will charge $150 per submission from universities and other nonprofit groups, and $300 per submission from for-profit entities. For example, he says, consider a researcher who is able to show, with proper controls and statistics, that an extract from eucalyptus bark relieves pain under certain conditions. “In today’s world, you can’t publish that in a good journal,” Rajendran says. “You would need to know which molecule it is and whether it cured the population of Nigeria.”
- As of 2019, the Poincaré conjecture is the only solved Millennium problem.
- The major part of these paper are not in high impact journals