Transcript OpenAccessTalk Kane

PUBLISHING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
LAWRENCE P. KANE, PH.D.
DEPT OF IMMUNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
DISCLOSURES
• Faculty of 1000 faculty member (Immunology)
• However, I am not an official representative of F1000, LLC
• Section editor for The Journal of Immunology (AAI)
• We have published two papers in F1000 Research,
both of which are indexed in PubMed
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
• How to balance a need for quality control
with a need for timely dissemination of
scientific findings?
• Why hasn’t this process become more timely
in the internet age?
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
• … before peer review became widespread, decisions
about what to publish were usually made by journal
editors, often acting largely on their own.
• These decisions were often made rapidly, with papers
appearing days or weeks after submission, after a
cursory review by the editor.
Michael Nielsen
WHAT HAPPENED?
• Increasing specialization of science, making editors’
jobs much more technically difficult
• The enormous increase in the number of scientific
papers being published
• The introduction of technologies for copying papers.
It’s just plain editorially difficult to implement peer
review if you can’t easily make copies of papers.
• The internet has actually made this process easier…
Michael Nielsen
WHY HAVEN’T THINGS CHANGED?
• Now, the single biggest factor preserving the peer
review system is probably social inertia… Michael Nielsen
• In addition, reviewers feel like they have the burden to
ensure that an accepted ms. meets some ill-defined
standards of the journal to which it is submitted (i.e. the
journal’s “impact factor”)
OTHER CHALLENGES
•Fear
• Promotions
• Funding!
IMPACT FACTOR
• This has led to the “tyranny of the impact factor.”
Ian Durham
• “Regardless of peer review, the quality and/or impact
of a paper is often not immediately apparent.”
THE DOMINANT MODEL
Submit
Publish
Review?
Decision
Revise?
Rereview?
F1000PRIME: POST-PUBLICATION “PEER REVIEW”
F1000Prime (http://f1000.com/prime) is an in-depth directory of top
articles in biology and medicine, as recommended by a Faculty of over
5,000 expert scientists and clinical researchers, assisted by 5,000
associates.
• Covers over 40 disciplines and more than 3,500 journals.
• Articles are rated and expert commentaries explain their importance.
• Over 140,000 recommendations (as of June 2013)
• On average, 1,500 new recommendations are contributed by the
Faculty each month.
• Subscription service (via institute or personal subscription)
F1000PRIME: POST-PUBLICATION “PEER REVIEW”
WHAT IS F1000-RESEARCH?
F1000Research is an original open access journal for life scientists, offering
immediate publication, transparent peer review (post-publication) and full data
deposition and sharing. All scientifically sound articles are accepted, including
single findings, case reports, protocols, replications, null/negative results and
more traditional articles.
F1000Research has a prestigious international Advisory Panel of more than 200
of the most eminent names in biology and medicine, and over 1,100 expert
Editorial Board members.
KEY FEATURES OF F1000RESEARCH
• Publication within a week
• Post-publication peer review
• Transparent peer review
• All data included
• Accepts non-traditional article types
TRADITIONAL PUBLICATION PROCESS
- Most journals publish papers after they pass peer review.
- The peer review process can take months – sometimes years.
- After rejection, start over again with another journal.
- This delays publication.
PUBLICATION DELAY IS A PROBLEM
• Can be scooped during review process
• No recent published work to show for funding
applications
• Lab members leave during revision process, and paper
may never be published if the project is abandoned.
• Slows down research progress
• Frustrating...
F1000-RESEARCH PUBLICATION PROCESS
• F1000Research articles are published online after an in-house pre-refereeing
check, on average, within 6 working days.
• Peer review and revisions are carried out publicly.
• Articles with sufficient positive referee reports are indexed in PubMed.
REFEREE REPORTS ARE PUBLIC
All referee names are
visible.
Referee reports and
other comments are
visible to anyone.
VERSIONS
Different versions of the
article are tracked
REFEREE SCORES
• Approved
• Approved with reservations
• Not approved
Once 2 “Approved” reviews (or 1
Approved plus 2 with reservations) are
received, the ms. is indexed in
PubMed, Scopus etc.
CITING F1000RESEARCH PAPERS
• Citations to F1000Research papers point to a particular version.
Example citation:
Spence J, Titov N, Johnston L et al. (2013) Internet-delivered eye movement desensitization
and reprocessing (iEMDR): an open trial [v2; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/zr]
F1000Research 2013, 2:79 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.2-79.v2)
• If a paper has been updated since it was cited, and readers land on an outdated
version of an article, a pop-up message on the article page makes readers aware that
there is a newer version:
WHAT DOES THE
FUTURE HOLD?
PROPOSED NEW RESEARCH PUBLISHING PLATFORM
Vitek Tracz & Rebecca Lawrence, F1000
“…despite the growth of Open Access mandates and incentives, the
majority of articles are still published behind subscription barriers.”
“We believe that the funders of research can effect change through the
provision of their own publishing platforms that enable their fundees to
publish their research at speed, and efficiently and openly.”
“We believe that such platforms can make research available in ways that
take us beyond the current problems, and can ultimately move the primary
focus of conducting new research back to the discovery of new findings
rather than as a means to publish a paper in a ‘high-impact’ journal.
“We believe publishers will adapt to provide and run such platforms on
behalf of funders as a service, and that the evaluation of published findings
can be better done post-publication through a variety of existing and new
qualitative and quantitative article-level metrics.”
THANKS!