During our recent Community Call, Björn Brembs, a professor at the Universität Regensburg in Germany, discussed problems with the current landscape of scientific publishing. Björn believes that the issue with journals is not accessibility since we have developed many ways to get around paywalls in recent years. Instead, he summarized the three most pressing problems as: Replicability, Affordability, and Functionality, which he also discusses in a 2023 Perspective.
(Brembs, Replacing academic journals, 2023)
Björn started with journals. He discussed that the problem with journals is that they overcharge the institutions by a factor of 5 to 10 (depending on how you count). That leads to institutions lacking affordability, which has consequences. For instance,institutions can’t automate things that researchers wish they would automate (costing time), and institutions also can’t afford to establish and maintain processes and technologies that would help researchers to scrutinize the science of other people, which leads to a replicability problem. Since institutions cannot provide adequate support that the researchers need, the researchers lack functionality, such as making Open Science the default, or helping the researchers scrutinize other people’s work. This causes everyone to be locked into this circle of problems. The consequence of that is a lack of reproducibility in science. Björn has shown data that suggest that, depending on the discipline, 40-80% of public support of science ends up in irreproducible publications.
What do journals have to do with replicability? Björn summarized the large body of data into one graph showing that as you climb up the journal rank, the higher the journal’s prestige, the less reliable the science. And if, in the hiring process, the researchers who publish only in the less reliable journals will be hired, then they will train people on how to get ahead in academia by publishing low-reliability papers in high-prestige journals. He also emphasized that it gets worse. For those high-prestige journals, we not only get unreliable science, but we also pay more for it.
What do journals do with the money they earn from publishing? If a researcher pays ~$4,000 to publish, $600 is the actual publication cost, $1,200 is the profit, and the remaining $2,200 is salaries and other costs, e.g., money for shareholders. The money doesn’t cover the functionalities that the researchers wish to have, such as journal prestige correlating with reliability of the published science, better peer review without the issues that it currently faces, more transparency, better filtering and discoverability, and so on. Instead, the publishers spend the money to develop or buy tools that cover the research cycle. This allows them to monitor what their products’ users are currently working on before anything is published. Then they can use their analytics to convince departments that people who work on those things should receive more money. Since those publishers make money on the unreliable science they publish, the consensus is that they should be substituted with better solutions.
The Council of the European Union (all the ministers of the EU member states) realized the problem with scientific publishing. In 2023, they published a paper on the hazards of scholarly publishing. They recommended the development of interoperable, non-profit infrastructure for publishing based on open software and standards to avoid lock-in of services, which received support from major research organizations. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what we currently have.
(Brembs, Replacing academic journals, 2023)
Björn elaborated on what such an interoperable, non-profit infrastructure could look like. It is a system where academic libraries redundantly host green repositories, so if even part of the globe goes offline, all the knowledge deposited there will still be available.
In such a system, the repository’s content, the output layer, would be any data, software, methods, and protocols academics create, packaged into research articles, multimedia, or policy advice (the narrative layer). On top of that would be the community layer, which is also decentralized and could edit, review, publish, and connect.
In the European Union, Open Research Europe is transitioning into such an interoperable, non-profit infrastructure, which is intended to look very similar to the infrastructure described by Björn, with many elements already in place. Therefore, we have the journal replacement halfway ready. However, even if we have the alternative, it doesn’t mean it will be used since many authors don’t have much choice where to publish. How then to break the monopoly and make this replacement the default?
Some people try to convince all kinds of evaluation committees worldwide not to judge the researchers based on the journal in which they publish. So far, Björn sees modest progress here. Instead, he discusses how we can convince people who are invested in science and proper spending of public funds that the time is ripe to make the change and take the action they couldn’t before. He lists two possibilities.
First, we should defund current journals, because public money should be spent via tenders or bidding. He explains that the institutions should find the most affordable service to fulfill their publishing needs instead of negotiating with big publishers. The European Commission has already launched such a tender for an open-access publishing platform. The outcome of this is Open Research Europe.
Second, funders can use their current funding criteria, but include a rule that they will not fund institutions that do not have a modern, federated infrastructure. This part incentivizes institutions to make a change since Björn believes not that individuals should be incentivized, but that institutions should be, because they are much more reluctant to change than individuals. Funders should put that pressure on reluctant institutions.
Following the talk was the Q&A session, where the call participants discussed many topics with Björn.
When asked about actionable steps an average researcher can take to move towards presented solutions, Björn emphasized that in the ideal world, the average researcher should focus not on that administrative stuff but on their research. He is focusing on this because the current system doesn’t work. He suggested that if researchers want to do something, they should go on committees and advise the university leadership to stop paying corporate publishers, complain about the current situation, and make it visible that this is a problem. Instead of wasting money on paying publishers, he suggests that institutions should use the money to build a system that serves researchers.
During further discussion, Björn added that there are several hurdles that need to be overcome, before the vision he presented can be implemented. He believes technology is not the main roadblock, but governance and organization are required. Such governance could possibly originate from the EU or UNESCO. During further discussion, Björn mentioned models that are in place in South America, such as SciELO, and how they can serve as an inspiration for Western institutions.
When asked whether there is a place for journals in this system, or if we should have something new come up, in response, Björn asked a thought-provoking question. He suggested we consider what function of a journal couldn’t be copied by the system presented? If you don’t have the answer for that, you have the answer.
We encourage you to view the entire thought-provoking presentation and discussion.
During our recent Community Call, Björn Brembs, a professor at the Universität Regensburg in Germany, discussed problems with the current landscape of scientific publishing. Björn believes that the issue with journals is not accessibility since we have developed many ways to get around paywalls in recent years. Instead, he summarized the three most pressing problems as: Replicability, Affordability, and Functionality, which he also discusses in a 2023 Perspective.
(Brembs, Replacing academic journals, 2023)
Björn started with journals. He discussed that the problem with journals is that they overcharge the institutions by a factor of 5 to 10 (depending on how you count). That leads to institutions lacking affordability, which has consequences. For instance,institutions can’t automate things that researchers wish they would automate (costing time), and institutions also can’t afford to establish and maintain processes and technologies that would help researchers to scrutinize the science of other people, which leads to a replicability problem. Since institutions cannot provide adequate support that the researchers need, the researchers lack functionality, such as making Open Science the default, or helping the researchers scrutinize other people’s work. This causes everyone to be locked into this circle of problems. The consequence of that is a lack of reproducibility in science. Björn has shown data that suggest that, depending on the discipline, 40-80% of public support of science ends up in irreproducible publications.
What do journals have to do with replicability? Björn summarized the large body of data into one graph showing that as you climb up the journal rank, the higher the journal’s prestige, the less reliable the science. And if, in the hiring process, the researchers who publish only in the less reliable journals will be hired, then they will train people on how to get ahead in academia by publishing low-reliability papers in high-prestige journals. He also emphasized that it gets worse. For those high-prestige journals, we not only get unreliable science, but we also pay more for it.
What do journals do with the money they earn from publishing? If a researcher pays ~$4,000 to publish, $600 is the actual publication cost, $1,200 is the profit, and the remaining $2,200 is salaries and other costs, e.g., money for shareholders. The money doesn’t cover the functionalities that the researchers wish to have, such as journal prestige correlating with reliability of the published science, better peer review without the issues that it currently faces, more transparency, better filtering and discoverability, and so on. Instead, the publishers spend the money to develop or buy tools that cover the research cycle. This allows them to monitor what their products’ users are currently working on before anything is published. Then they can use their analytics to convince departments that people who work on those things should receive more money. Since those publishers make money on the unreliable science they publish, the consensus is that they should be substituted with better solutions.
The Council of the European Union (all the ministers of the EU member states) realized the problem with scientific publishing. In 2023, they published a paper on the hazards of scholarly publishing. They recommended the development of interoperable, non-profit infrastructure for publishing based on open software and standards to avoid lock-in of services, which received support from major research organizations. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what we currently have.
(Brembs, Replacing academic journals, 2023)
Björn elaborated on what such an interoperable, non-profit infrastructure could look like. It is a system where academic libraries redundantly host green repositories, so if even part of the globe goes offline, all the knowledge deposited there will still be available.
In such a system, the repository’s content, the output layer, would be any data, software, methods, and protocols academics create, packaged into research articles, multimedia, or policy advice (the narrative layer). On top of that would be the community layer, which is also decentralized and could edit, review, publish, and connect.
In the European Union, Open Research Europe is transitioning into such an interoperable, non-profit infrastructure, which is intended to look very similar to the infrastructure described by Björn, with many elements already in place. Therefore, we have the journal replacement halfway ready. However, even if we have the alternative, it doesn’t mean it will be used since many authors don’t have much choice where to publish. How then to break the monopoly and make this replacement the default?
Some people try to convince all kinds of evaluation committees worldwide not to judge the researchers based on the journal in which they publish. So far, Björn sees modest progress here. Instead, he discusses how we can convince people who are invested in science and proper spending of public funds that the time is ripe to make the change and take the action they couldn’t before. He lists two possibilities.
First, we should defund current journals, because public money should be spent via tenders or bidding. He explains that the institutions should find the most affordable service to fulfill their publishing needs instead of negotiating with big publishers. The European Commission has already launched such a tender for an open-access publishing platform. The outcome of this is Open Research Europe.
Second, funders can use their current funding criteria, but include a rule that they will not fund institutions that do not have a modern, federated infrastructure. This part incentivizes institutions to make a change since Björn believes not that individuals should be incentivized, but that institutions should be, because they are much more reluctant to change than individuals. Funders should put that pressure on reluctant institutions.
Following the talk was the Q&A session, where the call participants discussed many topics with Björn.
When asked about actionable steps an average researcher can take to move towards presented solutions, Björn emphasized that in the ideal world, the average researcher should focus not on that administrative stuff but on their research. He is focusing on this because the current system doesn’t work. He suggested that if researchers want to do something, they should go on committees and advise the university leadership to stop paying corporate publishers, complain about the current situation, and make it visible that this is a problem. Instead of wasting money on paying publishers, he suggests that institutions should use the money to build a system that serves researchers.
During further discussion, Björn added that there are several hurdles that need to be overcome, before the vision he presented can be implemented. He believes technology is not the main roadblock, but governance and organization are required. Such governance could possibly originate from the EU or UNESCO. During further discussion, Björn mentioned models that are in place in South America, such as SciELO, and how they can serve as an inspiration for Western institutions.
When asked whether there is a place for journals in this system, or if we should have something new come up, in response, Björn asked a thought-provoking question. He suggested we consider what function of a journal couldn’t be copied by the system presented? If you don’t have the answer for that, you have the answer.
We encourage you to view the entire thought-provoking presentation and discussion.