Publish and Perish : Time to rescue science

Jun Maeda
Hokkaido Univ. Library

1. Root of issues

The overview of current academic structure in Japan is as follows: researchers make their living on salary from their affiliation. Their grade depends on the number of articles, often the sum of impact factor (IF) of journals on which their articles published. They pay for research activities to collect data (sometimes at fields), conferences to exchange latest information with other colleagues, and journals to publish their findings. They pay for all of them. One can notice, however, why they publish their scientific findings by paying to journal publishers. It sounds quite strange if you know “normal” contracts between authors and a publisher on books and magazine articles that you can see at bookshops around the corner. In these cases, author sell their manuscript, so the publishers pay for it. Researchers, on the other hand, pay to publish, and what’s more, they pay to read. We want to break this situation to find alternatives for sustainable scientific advancement.
At the same time, institutional repositories (IRs) are one of the issues that have long been discussed in Japan from the point of view of why we keep them for who. When considering the repository’s function in the current era, we cannot ignore the journal issue since it comes first on which repository issue relies, and indirectly indicate what IRs should turn out to be.

2. Personnel evaluation

Why researchers “want to” publish in top journals? The answer is simple. It’s because they want their findings to show up in well-known journals whose “impact” is huge. Here we can understand “impact” in a few different ways. One is simply they want their articles to become famous by published in a famous journal. Essentially there is no correlation between the quality of researchers work (paper) and that of journals, but researchers forget it when they submit the manuscript :) Some are feeling proud of themselves simply their articles are published in famous journals. In other words, they judge by covers, and not by articles. Next but foremost is evaluation. Such “journal impact” comes to affect their grading and promotion which are directly linked to their net salary. In the current system, they are graded by the number of articles and sometime by the sum of IF that their articles are published when they are graded or getting an academic post. Number of articles and IF counts work as evaluation indices for research experience. Needless to say, these indices are unfair, and sometimes misleading. One can easily sprit the article into two or more to get more number of papers published. IF simply shows the impact of journals and is nothings to do with the quality of the work (article). In the bottom of their heart, every researcher understands that this is unfair and not desirable but, at the same time, they seldom voice their opinion. This is because such scientists (mostly younger researchers) are in a position to be evaluated by principal investigators (PIs), labs’ bosses, and senior researchers in the field who have lived too long along the current evaluation system.
Having said that, the start point of the journal issue lies upon evaluation of researcher.

3. We all have it

Do we really need current-style journal? My answer is no. We don’t need mega-publishers to sustain our research activities. Articles are now online, and not bind as physical journal. All we need to do is quit judging by journal covers and depart from IF-based evaluation. Now we have preprint servers in many fields of research, and they are still growing. Scientific associations take the role of editorial board to assign reviewers to preprint articles. Once reviews are put on a preprint article and authors make a rebuttal, editors make decisions. It differs nothing from current journals. Just do it by researchers themselves. It will soon make a huge difference.
Preprints are published open online to anyone, so nobody must pay to read. They can just access and read. Are there any essential differences between the “reviewed article” in a preprint server and current “publisher version of article” on journals? No. They are same. They work out same. The difference is cost when authors pay to publish and readers to read. The alternative way costs you nothing to both publish and read (although editorial and system running costs shall be considered, of course). Here we need no open access initiative, as they are all open online from the manuscript submission. Reviews are still voluntary work but, in this way, researchers are not exploited by publishers.
Then connect the review to researchers CV. This can be automatically done by collaborating preprint server with current research information systems (CRIS) such as ORCID, ResearchGate, and Researchmap. Preprint server, CRIS, now we all have it.

4. Shifting to review-based evaluation

Here we propose new evaluation method. It is based on review activities. The scientific activities can be evaluated by “reviews.” All of the scientific activities can be regarded as reviewing. If you supervise an undergraduate student, for example, you will review their term reports and thesis. With masters and Ph.D. candidates, you will review their journal manuscript, posters, as well as their thesis. Discussion and correction on these papers, posters, and theses are nothing but reviewing activity. Therefore, these reviews can be recorded as “education (supervising) experience” on researchers’ CV. In the same context, we take in preprint reviewing. This is no difference from current journal manuscript reviewing. In addition to article publication, it can be recorded as “research experience” separately from “education (supervising) experience” in CV. Every researcher works as author and reviewer at research as well as supervisor at education. Thus, both should equally be taken into their CV, hence, to be evaluated in a correct manner.
Some still say they would stick to mega-journals. Some will choose it, of course. Wake up scientists. You can foresee if the current situation that researchers are double- or triple-costed per a paper could last for long. It is time to search for sustainable alternative to maintain academic finding to be shared. It’s the only way to keep science going. If researchers get off the board of mega-journals and start thinking to stand on themselves, the residual amount of budget would be shared for research communities instead of wasting in double- or triple costing in publishing, reviewing, and reading. Quit judging by covers, and shift to review-based evaluation.

5. Repository: it is your turn

Some scientific community may not have platforms to publish, review, and read. If so, does the story end? No, here we librarians have one for you, that is, institutional repository. It can be used as publication platform, at least, preprint server. Librarians have always been seeking out the demands from scientific community, so there is much room for shaping repository up to the one researchers desire it to be. For example, researchers can ask librarians to accept preprints. Yes, we will. Researchers can ask librarians to let them to review in the repository. Yes, we will. Librarians are supporters. If there is demands, librarians can arrange and change corresponding policies and functions (of libraries, and repositories). In the coming era, libraries should prepare their repository not only for the use of their university members but also for the use of scientific community that spread around the nation. IRs may split some volume to share/integrate with that of other IRs to provide adequate amount of volume to serve as preprint server for some research fields.
As for Japan’s repository itself, it has long been used without concrete policies. We do not mention this to say bad about repository, but instead, we want a repository to work truly on demand based. It’s time to thrive.

6. Time to rescue science

Here we have shown a future alternative way to drastically but essentially change the current journal based academic activities. In combination with preprint server, IRs, and CRIS, the current publishing culture can dramatically be shifted into low-cost and sustainable one. We have all we need. What we need is action. If researchers do not make action, they will be supposed to continue dancing on the hands of mega-journals regardless they are conscious about it or not. Then more and more scientific budget will flow into publishers, threatening the research activities themselves. It will, as you can easily imagine, lead to a collapse of science.
Wake up and see. Science is sinking. Only “we” can rescue it.
It’s time to change. It’s time to act.

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Image from Pixabay by jacqueline macou

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