Brave new world of scientific publication?
My dissertation research was published in 1983 in a two-author paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. JBC is the house journal of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. After your referees and the editor approved, the manuscript was published with the payment of “page charges,” to cover the journal costs since it didn’t take advertising. JBC is a stolid publication; it has a reputation for rigor, if not excitement.
In my 40+ years of science publication, I’ve usually had to pay page charges, and sometimes color plate charges. Fortunately, I’ve had the funding to pay when I needed to. And my most cited publication has been cited over 700 times, so visibility hasn’t been a problem for me as a scientist. But baked in the cake of the scientific publication business model is (1) delays for reviews and revisions (my most cited paper spent 10 months in review), (2) barriers to publication based on ability to pay and (3) barriers to access based on subscriptions. To cut to the chase, public access to publicly funded data was encumbered by the publishing business.
In the past couple of decades, there has been limited progress in the form of open-access journals, but these still levy page charges for authors. And preprint servers like bioRxiv now post pre-publication data on a voluntary basis.
Enter the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, with a policy due next year to (1) refuse to pay publication costs and (2) require posting manuscripts prior to peer review. No longer will the journal brand substitute for critical reading by the scientific community.
Is this the future? Is it even a good idea? Is this the sort of creative destruction that the science community needs, or is this an open door to a QAnon for science?
Gates Foundation announces new open-access publication policy
In my 40+ years of science publication, I’ve usually had to pay page charges, and sometimes color plate charges. Fortunately, I’ve had the funding to pay when I needed to. And my most cited publication has been cited over 700 times, so visibility hasn’t been a problem for me as a scientist. But baked in the cake of the scientific publication business model is (1) delays for reviews and revisions (my most cited paper spent 10 months in review), (2) barriers to publication based on ability to pay and (3) barriers to access based on subscriptions. To cut to the chase, public access to publicly funded data was encumbered by the publishing business.
In the past couple of decades, there has been limited progress in the form of open-access journals, but these still levy page charges for authors. And preprint servers like bioRxiv now post pre-publication data on a voluntary basis.
Enter the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, with a policy due next year to (1) refuse to pay publication costs and (2) require posting manuscripts prior to peer review. No longer will the journal brand substitute for critical reading by the scientific community.
Is this the future? Is it even a good idea? Is this the sort of creative destruction that the science community needs, or is this an open door to a QAnon for science?
Gates Foundation announces new open-access publication policy
Joel:
Being unpublished (me) in the manner you were published over a lengthy period of time, how does this solve the issue of being published in a quicker manner? Will the peer review of manuscripts occur before publication? How would this get into a reviewers hands if unpublished? Somehow a pre-publication review has to occur. And the security of scholarship is guaranteed how?
“grantees will be required to share preprints of their research, pushing research toward a preprint-first approach and removing the barriers of price and prestige from participation.”
Who pays?
@Bill,
By requiring manuscripts to be uploaded before peer review, it gets the data in the hands of people sooner, since peer review can take a couple months (and if the MS is rejected and revised for a different journal, even more months). The security of scholarship becomes the responsibility of the authors and the readers, in this model, at least until peer review occurs. As for who pays, bioRxiv is free.
Joel:
Since your question was about whether this would help. does this satisfy the needs of those who were hoping for faster results? Did I miss something here, which was obvious to everyone but to me?
@Bill,
It would satisfy the needs of researchers in academia and industry who want fast access to new data to advance discovery. It doesn’t satisfy the needs of publishers. It may also play havoc with the metrics that administrations use to evaluate faculty. There are many agendas that would be affected by a new system like this.
Joel:
It appeared to be obvious. I approached this in a cautious manner. I have no experience in this and do not wish to offend. Thank you.
@Bill,
No offense taken. Let’s see how this plays out. The Gates Foundation isn’t the biggest funder of biomedical research in the US–that’s the NIH. If they adopt a policy like this, things will definitely change.