What Are the Features of a New Publishing Model?
Clearly the current publishing model is utterly dysfunctional. The best way to see that is to ask the following question. If the current system is thrown away, and the scientists gather to create a brand new system for publishing, will they build a replica of the current model? Will they beg the journal companies to lock up their papers in exchange for free work of writing, editing, reviewing and most importantly doing the entire research?
How the Current System Came into Existence
Before proposing an alternate system, let us review how we arrived at the current juncture. For a humorous take, you can check “How Biologist Got His Publishing System”, but here is what really happened.
Facilitated by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of industrial publishing, many now-famous journals came into existence in the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a 2013 post, I wrote about the first issue of Nature, published in 1869. The articles in that inaugural issue read more like blog posts reviewing important scientific discoveries than like original research reports.
Traditionally scientific societies took care of publishing. Scientists paid their yearly dues, and a significant part of the fund was used to maintain the publishing system. Also, the society members volunteered to review papers, because they felt responsible to maintain the quality of the journals. Members received the (paper) journals by mail and loved to read them.
Two developments fundamentally upended this system: (i) the arrival of the internet, and (ii) the massive increase in funding for the NIH.
Why is the System so Broken?
Yesterday I mentioned -
I was planning to buy a biology book published in the 1990s and wanted to check an old review on it before spending my money. The price of the thick book came down to below $20, but the one page review article still costs $32.99.
Why does a single short review from 1990 cost over $30? Here is why. Prior to arrival of the internet, the researchers transferred copyright to their articles to the journals to be published in physical media. This agreement was not meant to be for the internet. The journal companies are abusing that agreement to lock up old papers.
Thanks to the internet, a revolution took place in how we communicate with significantly lower costs, yet the journal companies applied the old method of pricing on the new media. The scientists went along, because the grants covered the funding. In other words, the internet revolution never arrived for scientific publishing. Even the open-access model is a minor tweak of the old system, because the journals charge an arm and a leg to allow you the privilege of open-accessing your paper.
Brainstorming for a New System
Just like the internet apps (e.g. Whatsapp) revolutionizing personal communications did not come from the phone companies, the changes in the publishing system will not come from the existing journals. Moreover, the government organizations like NIH will only issue edicts within the current system, and therefore the changes brought by them will be marginal.
I think we need a Whatsapp-like revolutionary change for publishing. The best way to think about it is to ask the question proposed earlier. If the current system disappears entirely, and the scientists gather to create a brand new publishing model from scratch, what will it look like?
I came across this idea from Mike Eisen.
I’ve said in many times and places what I think we should do. Have everything publishes as what we call now preprints and make that the only form of publication. It’s entirely author driven, and the infrastructure would be cheap and funded centrally so there would be no costs to publish or read. Then have peer review be layered on top of those already published works, with everything ranging from individual comments/reviews from readers to organized review by scientific societies to whatever else people invent to do it. The system of peer review we have today isn’t just expensive, it isn’t just bad because it denies lots of people access - it’s bad because it doesn’t do a good job at its job of assessing the validity and impact of science. We can do infinitely better for a lot less money if we cut journals out of the system entirely.
Do you have an alternate idea? Please post on twitter or email me (samanta@homolog.us), and I will be happy to add it here.
