The ideal shared by almost all scientists is that science should be open and transparent, not just in its practices and procedures, but so that the results and the knowledge generated through research should be freely accessible to all. There is a broad consensus in the scientific community that such openness and transparency promotes the advancement of science and enhances the likelihood that the benefits of science are enjoyed by all. For more than a hundred years, these principles have been the bedrock of academia and the scientific community.

Hat tip: Open Access News

I was struck by a particular point Peter raised:  that the availability of funds to pay for access [to research] does not scale to keep pace with the growth of published knowledge.

It made me think about the format problem.  I've been hearing it mentioned over and over again, this question: why are we so attached to packaging our research into a journal format?

Is it the brand name that we're so attached to?  If we're looking for quality, do we simply just seek out the Prada of journals?  Does not the research stand up for itself, just like a consumer good has to? If your Vuitton luggage falls apart after one trip down the baggage conveyor belt, does the fancy brand matter anymore?

Maybe its about lack of time.  Who has the time to compare quality of consumer goods...we've all purchased a generic brand at one point or another that greatly underperformed. To protect against that disappointment, its just easier to pay a little more for the name brand version.  Perhaps we adopt a similar mentality with research?

This worries me a bit.  The fact that research output volumes are multiplying so quickly...is it not in a way working against the cause?...is it not further fueling the demand for these high impact journals to exist? Is it not so much easier to simply save time by trusting the name brand research?

In my mind, the solution lies in the metrics...where citations and downloads can be measured and compared to the opinions of the elite groups of peer reviewers that decide which articles are Vuittons and which are simply generic.   I can't help but predict that once a more unified and unprejudiced method of tracking impact appears, brand names just won't matter.  The quality of an item of research will simply stand up for itself, visible for all to see, no longer in need of being sold under a designer label.

The core of the criticism by Declan Butler was directed against the business model of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), in particular that a large part of their total income is produced by "bulk publishing" in the "database" PLoS ONE with only "light" peer review. There is no point in denying that PLoS ONE is a major source of income for PLoS, that it publishes many papers, and that it is not a top-tier journal. Still, it is in my view an unnecessary provocation to refer to a journal from a competitor as a "database" and between the lines suggest that they do not perform proper peer review.

I have nothing against Nature Publishing Group (NPG) - they are in my view one of the more progressive publishers with initiative such as Connotea and Nature Network. However, I find the criticism by Declan Butler somewhat unfair, especially considering that NPG also has a considerable number of lower impact journals in their portfolio in addition to their lineup of Nature journals. To illustrate this point, I looked up the impact factors for all the PLoS and NPG journals that I could find (6 and 68, respectively) and plotted the distributions:

The average impact factors of the two publishers are remarkably similar 9.19 for PLoS and 9.39 for NPG, but the underlying distributions are very different. Notably, the high average impact factor of NPG's journals is due to a fairly small number of journals with impact factors over 20, which are sufficient to offset the large number of journals with impact factors below 5. Consequently, the median impact factors are 9.03 for PLoS and only 4.88 for NPG.

I want to be the first to point out the caveats of this analysis. First, the analysis above did not take into account that each journal does not publish the same number of papers. However, weighting the journals by number of papers when calculating average impact factors shifts the balance in favor of PLoS (9.79 for PLoS vs. 9.46 for NPG). Second, the journal PLoS ONE does not have an impact factor yet and was thus not included in my analysis. Third, the criticism by Declan Butler was mainly targeting the fact that much of PLoS' revenue is due to PLoS ONE. However, until NPG chooses to make available detailed financial reports like PLoS does, it is impossible to tell how much of their revenue comes from lower-impact journals.

That being said, the business models of PLoS and NPG do not look all that different based on bibliographic metrics alone.

Full disclosure: I am an associate editor of PLoS Computational Biology.

It's nice to hear Timo Hannay's view of open content (actually rather refreshing after reading Declan Butler's tantrum piece). I am a bit puzzled, however. Does Hannay's views represent the view of the Nature Publishing Group as a whole or do they represent only his own views? And, how does all of this  fits in with the Nature vs. PLoS runaway train of Declan Butler that has been whipping up a storm in the blogosphere over the last few days (see Bora's post for a succinct summary). The pieces by Declan Butler (he actually has two stories, the second and the first) unequivocally give a impression that Nature is (as Timo puts it in the clip) one of those "hostile" and "reactionary" publishers that are in a "defensive mode" towards the Open Access publishing model that "give the whole industry a disservice".

Hat tip: Open Access News

1. The Scientists. At the front line of any scientific discovery is a scientist, from the lofty heights of the hallowed Professor to the lab-rat or student, slaving away at the bench, scientists work on the front line Science. For most scientists, they make a living from their inventions, ideas and discoveries that they own. Science is their livelihood, © The Author(s).
2. The Engineering and Technology companies. There's a whole lot of Science behind commercial engineering and technology. Take Google's software for example, the computer science and mathematics behind search technology is substantial, the PageRank algorithm is the basis for all that income generated from advertising, so not surprisingly it's been patented. That's Science, but you can't see it, because it's private not public.
3. The Pharmaceutical companies. Have a look at any of the top ten best-selling drugs worldwide during 2006. Obviously, lots of Science and Biotechnology went into developing those lucrative cash-cows that pharma companies make their living from, while funding the effort to find the new drugs for the future. Science is how these businesses stay in business and keep their investors and shareholders happy, Science is how they make a profit, so they own it.
4. The Governments. Lots of Science is funded by different governments around the globe, they've got a stake in it too. The American government spends the most, pouring billions of dollars into all kinds of basic and applied research.
5. The Universities and Research Institutes. All that Science going on in different Universities and Research Institutes around the globe, they've got a claim on it too. Without these institutions, most Scientists wouldn't have a place to work.
6. The Philanthropists and Charities. It's not just governments who fund science, charities foot the bill too. Now that Microsoft instigator Bill Gates has retired, he'll be pumping all his billions of dollars into the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, funding a whole lot of Science. There's plenty of other charities and foundations like it, big and small, the Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme, MacArthur Foundation, etc the list goes on and on.
7. The Scientific Publishers. Look at any paper in a top-tier prestigious Scientific journal like Nature, Science or PNAS. You'll see a big fat copyright sign © on pretty much every single one. © Nature Publishing Group, © American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), © The National Academy of Sciences, All Rights Reserved. It's not just them either, © Elsevier B.V., © Oxford University Press and so on. You could be forgiven for (wrongly) thinking it's the publishers who own the Science...
8. The Public. Since we all benefit from it, and pay for it through our taxes, and charitable donations, we all own it. The public at large own science, as John Ziman once put it, "Science is Public Knowledge". According to this definition, you could argue, if it's not in the public domain, then it's not Science. All that secret science that goes on inside commercial companies, behind closed doors? It's not Science, until it's public. That means YOU, yes you, Jo / Joe Public, everybody reading this owns Science.
9. Nobody. Nobody owns Science, not even the public, Science is just there. The science of tomorrow, that's not owned by anyone either, it's just waiting to be discovered or invented...

But hey, what do I know? You don't want to listen to me, I'm just a humble postdoc. If you would like to join the debate, and you are anywhere near Manchester, UK, you might be interested in "Who Owns Science?", a public lecture and debate. Join Anna Ford chair a discussion lead by Nobel laureates John Sulston and Joseph Stiglitz on just who the hell is it who owns this crazy little thing called Science?

References

1. Science is being held back by outdated laws: The question "who owns science?" is now crucial, The Times (of London), 2008-07-05
2. Medical research is ‘hindered by out-of-date laws’ System is inefficient and corrupt, say scientists, The Times (of London), 2008-07-05

(CC-licensed picture of Padlock and Key by Imagined Reality)

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Dear Dr. Wynn,

In recognition of your outstanding reputation and contribution in the field of Demography ,we are pleased to propose your name as the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Open Demography Journal'. After the selection your role as the Editor-in-Chief will not be an onerous one. You will not be expected to process any submitted manuscripts to the journal nor referee them (unless you choose to do so). What we would expect from you is that you would arrange to solicit and submit a minimum of ten manuscripts to the journal each year. Moreover, from time to time we would hope that you would offer advice on how best to develop the journal in order to maintain and improve on its success in the field. You would also be free to invite new editorial board members to the journal who wish to take an active editorial role. For all manuscripts that you submit to the journal, from above ten that are published, we will pay you annual royalty of 5% of all fees received on these manuscripts.

Since the launch of the new open access journal entitled "The Open Demography Journal" there has been a lot of interest in the journal from both authors and readers. The journal is freely available at no costs to readers via the journal's website at www.todemoj.org. We expect that this year the number of submitted manuscripts to the journal will rapidly increase and that the journal will establish itself internationally.

Your term as the Editor-in-Chief would be initially for two years which is renewable by mutual agreement. We hope you will consider this offer and look forward to receiving your positive reply. Please could you reply to me by return email at email: editor@benthamopen.org within 24 hours after receipt of this offer along with your detailed CV and list of publications so that it can be sent to the Advisory Board for review.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
BENTHAM OPEN

[This message has been sent to you because of your eminence in the field. If, however, you do not want to receive any email/offer/invitation in future from Bentham Open, then please click here.]

Hmm. I know that open access publishing requires a different funding model than the traditional subscriber-pays, and perhaps that will entail a different approach to soliciting and rewarding academic labor. Yet I hadn't quite imagined my way to the model outlined in this letter, which is almost a pyramid scheme. It does explain all the e-mails I've gotten this year from the editors of obscure open-access journals, inviting me to contribute. They're all looking for their 5%, I guess.

Perhaps I would be more inclined to take the funding model seriously if it weren't obviously spam. Not only am I not a demographer, I've only ever published one article in a demography journal (which I assume is where they got my name). I'm about the furthest thing from "eminence in the field." What's uncanny is that just last month I also got invited to be the editor-in-chief of a new medical journal devoted to women's health. (Ditto as with the demography business: I'm not a physician, though I do publish in medical journals and write about reproductive health policy.)

Is anyone else getting stuff like this?

--L.L. Wynn

Ich konnte im Netz dazu nicht viel finden. Hier meine mageren Rechercheergebnisse: Es gibt eine Krankheit - deren Existenz schon umstritten ist - im Zusammenhang mit Allergien und
Vitamin B6, die sogenannte Hämopyrrollaktamurie. Da soll aber auch noch Zink im Spiel sein und das klingt für mich alles tatsächlich eher nach Hokuspokus.

Was mich allerdings aufhorchen ließ, ist eine Bemerkung in der englischen Wikipedia, dass eine bestimmte Form von Vitamin B6 mit der Histamin-Synthese im Körper zu tun hat und Histamin spielt ja bei Allergien bekanntermaßen eine wichtige Rolle. Vielleicht ist also sogar im wissenschaftlichen Sinne was dran. Leider ist die Studie mal wieder nicht online - wie meist. Das gibt mir die Gelegenheit noch schnell auf die Wichtigkeit von Open Access hinzuweisen.

Individual entries include a brief description of the piece, art cover, file size, genre, and two different options for download. There is also space for users to comment on the piece.

Here’s an example of what you will find for Isabel Allende.

You can take a look at the site here.

I'm thinking of means to learn about the existence of relevant new work (alert systems), find the texts and the passages we need (search engines), find work already found by colleagues (tagging and social networking systems), find articles similar to ones we know to be relevant (recommendation systems), find articles in our own language (machine translation), navigate to cited sources (reference linking), navigate to different versions of cited sources or other relevant destinations (multiple-resolution hyperlinks), convert a text to speech when we can't read the screen (voice readers), paraphrase articles we don't have time to read (text summarizers), digest larger volumes of literature than we could ever read (text mining), combine independent resources to create new synergies and utility (mash-ups), find information relevant to our questions even when we don't know the relevant keywords (semantic web), distill uncopyrightable facts from natural-language texts and enter them into queryable OA databases (knowledge extraction), pose our search queries in our own words and sometimes even get back direct answers rather than mere pointers to literature that may contain answers (natural language search engines).

That's from Peter Suber in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #123 of July 2, 2008. (SPARC is an acronym for Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.)

Suber talks about the "last-mile problem for knowledge" and its two stages:

1. getting access to texts or data
2. getting answers to questions

I think it's a great essay with immediate relevance to what GSm is tackling.

Read the whole article.

[tip of the hat to Bora]

"The year which has passed has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear."

Charles Darwin’s own recollections of the meeting and its aftermath were more prosaic. In his autobiography, written in 1876 for his children, he recalled,

"Nevertheless, our joint productions excited very little attention, and the only published notice of them which I can remember was by Professor Haughton of Dublin, whose verdict was that all that was new in them was false, and what was true was old.”

It is perhaps fitting that as we are about to start the celebrations of one of the greatest achievements in the history of science another scientific revolution is in the making. Science is currently undergoing a transformation from being a closed door enterprise where research was only accessible to the selected few having access to payed journal subscriptions, to an Open Access (OA) model where research is available freely online to anyone under limited copyright and licensing restrictions. The effect that OA will have on the way scientific research is accessed and disseminated cannot be underestimated and, in this respect, it has much in common with the way the evolutionary theory profoundly changed our world. That anyone can access high-profile ground breaking research instantaneously and free is a powerful idea. Research can now instantaneously and with no restrictions reach the small nonprofit research institute, the private citizen sitting at his desktop at home, journalists, artists, students and researchers in developing countries. Who knows, given the right opportunities, which includes unrestricted access to high-profile research, the next Darwin or Einstein may very well be from Africa.

There is perhaps no more compelling argument for OA and against closed-access than Jonathan Eisen's inaugural editorial as the Academic Editor-in-Chief at PLoS Biology.