back to article Boffins urged to publish in free journals by science sugardaddy

Expensive research journal subscriptions could be on the way out, if the Wellcome Trust has its way. The moneybags UK research foundation has published a report favoring free, so-called open access, journals over those that charge a fee for access. The report reviewed the activities of research institutions that received …

  1. beast666

    Great news!

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

      Wellcome News!

    2. Aitor 1

      False

      They say they want that, but then assign funds very much as everyone else, this is, based on impact of publications.. and a Nature article counts A LOT more than the very same article on a "free journal".

      So yes, go and ruin your career for the common good.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: False

        @Aitor 1,

        "They say they want that, but then assign funds very much as everyone else, this is, based on impact of publications.. and a Nature article counts A LOT more than the very same article on a "free journal".

        So yes, go and ruin your career for the common good."

        Yep, that. Wellcome Trust are big, but they're by no means the only funding body out there. I think they're being pretty naive if they think that everyone will go along with this and play nicely.

        Science as a whole likes to project to the general public an image of altruism, objectivity and integrity. For some fields, that's bollocks. Based on what I've seen as an un-involved observer of the biomedical world (I am not a disgruntled practitioner! I'm an engineer) the whole peer review, publishing and objectivity thing is pretty badly tarnished.

        Publishing

        There are peer reviewers who reject papers because it's on the same topic as one of their own that's not ready yet.

        There are high impact journals exploiting their position and extracting cash from desperate scientists who will bend over backwards to make the last few years of their lives count for something and to secure their future career.

        There are senior scientists in certain fields who, because of their reputation, get a review-free pass for a number of papers per year, and some use those to further the careers of their chums despite the papers being junk. This famously went wrong a while back when an incredible (and, as it turned out, made up) paper on stem cells got published only for it to turn out the author had been having an affair with one such senior scientist. Nature withdrew that one, eventually, and sadly the senior committed suicide in front of their colleagues, in the corridor, outside their office.

        Such senior scientists at the top of their field are not above controlling what is presented at conferences, even if they're not attending the conference themselves. I've heard of one such scientist phoning up a conference organiser and forbidding the presentation of a paper that contradicted his own work. The conference organiser caved in - they have a living to make as well. I can't necessarily blame the senior scientists - they have a career, funding streams, reputation and income to preserve too, and who wouldn't use all their powers to stop a threat to that?

        It can be incredibly difficult to overturn established ideas, even when your paper is incontrovertible. In some fields "not invented here" is too strong a force. Try getting funding for climate research if your previous output has been branded as being "off-message", even if it is peer reviewed.

        When you do finally get a paper published a whole horde of other journals get in touch. They're eager for you to slightly update your article so that it can legitimately be republished. It's like a bunch of underlings clamouring for favours. It's not surprising the power goes to their heads when they reach the top of their discipline.

        Funding

        In some fields there's zero coordination of funding across the world, especially when it seems that there might be big money at the end of it (e.g. cure for cancer, etc). Everyone wants to own the IPR at the end of it all, no one will tell anyone else what they're really doing or what their negative results are.

        Publishing negative results is dangerous to one's well being. It means your competitors can more reliably target their own work to fruitful areas. Better to leave negative results unpublished like land mines on a battlefield, perhaps even hint to other groups that they're "worth investigating", simply to tie up their resources and stop them beating you to publication.

        When one group gets an important paper published there's probably a few other groups who see their projects wiped out, careers destroyed.

        In a lot of countries you cannot get a PhD unless you can publish a paper doing it. In the biomedical world that's very hard to do now. Particularly in the United States the number of people successfully finishing their PhDs is falling fast. Unless they get really lucky they likely cannot beat other groups to publication, and they either have to start again or quit having run out of cash. The smart ones work out that that's likely to be a waste of their time and money and lives before they even begin.

        The funding is awful for life style too. You're living hand to mouth on a string of short term research grants. Try being a pregnant woman and getting paid maternity. Some are very good about it (e.g. Cambridge University steps in and pays maternity leave, thumbs up there). Quite a lot of others say fuck off employment law doesn't apply to these cases (and they're right; it doesn't. It's not employment, it's a grant). And you end up with stupid dribbles of pensions that aren't going to make a jot of difference when you retire. The only way out is to become a lawyer / accountant / engineer / project manager (lots do, and wish they'd done it 10 years previously instead of pissing their lives away in a forest of test tubes), or get tenure (dead-man's shoes, so many don't).

        Policy

        Generally speaking scientists can be pretty bad at policy, and hopeless at politics.

        For example there's plenty of them advising that climate change will doom us (true, man made or not), yet far too few of them realise that there's not a politician alive who actually wants to burn oil or gas.

        All a politician actually wants to do is keep the lights on and keep civilisation working. They don't want to burn oil because they like the smell and the pretty colours, they just want to keep things going and keep their jobs as a convenient by-product.

        If all scientists had ever said was "here's a cheaper sure-fire way of generating all the energy you want from sun/nuclear/fusion/water/wind/whatever that means not depending on hot sandy places, would you like us to go away and develop it?" the politicians would bite their hands off. Then the man-made contribution to climate change would take care of itself without any more words needing to be said about burning less oil and gas.

        However even now there's some scientists, eager to preserve their funding, position, etc. and who aren't involved in the international fusion project, or developing solar panels, or building solar towers, etc. who seemingly talk very loudly about nothing else without actually making a positive contribution. Not helpful. Can't blame them - if you've made a career out of trying to persuade people that something must be done, and everyone goes "yeah, ok", what do you do next? Pack it all in, or keep going? The result is that against the cacophony of the scientific community's noise it's pretty hard to hear useful stuff.

        And the lackadaisical approach some branches of science take to their work is astonishing. For example it turns out that building wind turbines on top of hills in remote places in the UK is often not a good idea. The heavy duty access roads that have to be built to the turbine site act as dams and kill off the peat bogs that are inevitably in the way. This does untold ecological harm and releases far more CO2 than if we'd simply burnt coal equivalent to the turbine's output. One carelessly built access road can destroy billions of tons of peat marsh. I don't remember many climate scientists taking that into account in their models for the benefits of land based wind turbines before the the turbines were built. By failing to take a whole-system (turbine = site + road + cables + etc. Er, perhaps we ought to speak to an expert on marshes?) approach to their models they didn't give good advice.

        Scientists and Politicians

        But politicians are getting fairly canny - they know that for every scientist that actually dispenses useful advice there's a hundred who don't. It's not surprising that politicians don't really "trust" scientists (or engineers for that matter), unless they employ them directly. That's an important point. A scientist with a permanent tax payer funded job to advise the government is then free to give whatever advise they believe to be correct. It's then no real skin off their nose if they find that their advise conflicts with some of their previous academic output; they've still got a job at the end of it. The personal motivations are more firmly aligned with the common good than if they were still in academia.

        The distrust politicians have of science is pretty damaging. Look at ITER - the international fusion research effort. If that works, that changes literally every aspect of civilisation for the better. It's such a good bet (and thus far that field has an excellent track record) that there should be almost no barrier to making it happen. However, whilst it's only costing a few billion Euros, it struggles for funding. Whilst you and I might know that ITER should be a high priority, the funding politicians generally speaking are not well equipped to filter and judge good ideas amongst the cacaphony they get from the wider scientific community and indeed all of humanity.

        The following illustrates the consequences. Gordon Brown, one-time prime minister of just one single country participating in ITER, spent ten times that level of funding in a single afternoon without even blinking to save the British banks. That's not a balanced resolution of priorities, but that's as much the fault of the scientific community as the politicians.

        Conclusion </rant>

        Basically, mixing money/profit and science really, really corrupts it most horribly. In the long run this does not do anyone any favours. Remember that next time you're running a marathon for a cancer research charity, etc. etc. Using the money to invest a medical corporate might just be a better bet.

        If a friend's offspring are contemplating a career in science I generally advise against it. Get a proper job in a medical or drugs company if you must, or become an engineer.

        1. Schultz

          AC above

          Wow, you should go into journalism, I hear they pay by the word ;).

          You did a good job laying out the problems of the current system. Unfortunately there is no easy solution to improve the publication business and science funding. Many things that look good on paper may be completely unfeasible -- but who should tell so, except for the specialists in the field who try to (over)sell their ideas. ITER is a great idea? Maybe, or maybe we should invest more in smaller scientific projects because the fusion thing just is not ready yet (and spending billions at a time may not be the most efficient way of getting there).

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: AC above

            Simple solution - go back to journals being published by institutions.

            Then the Proceedings of the University of X or the Royal institute of Y can be peer reviewed and prestigious and edited and appear on their website for negligible cost to the institution.

            The only reason publishers got in on the act was that it became too expensive for an individual university dept to print and mail physical paper - we don't need to do that anymore

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: AC above

              @ Yet Another Anonymous coward,

              "Simple solution - go back to journals being published by institutions.

              Then the Proceedings of the University of X or the Royal institute of Y can be peer reviewed and prestigious and edited and appear on their website for negligible cost to the institution."

              That would certainly deal with the publishing problem to a very large extent.

              Alas it cannot help very much with the competitiveness associated with securing funding, unless the institution is also the sole source of funds. Unfortunately there's too many people involved in the existing funding bodies who also have jobs to preserve, and they'd never agree to go along with it Devolving their function to a single institution threatens their own livelihoods!

              Even if some of them moved over to working for the Institution instead, there wouldn't be room for all of them.

              I'm hearing that one major cancer research funding body has just gone bankrupt. Their accounts are due soon, I'm not anticipating their arrival. The last lot didn't look promising - spending way more than their income. It's left PhD students in the lurch, programs suddenly deprived of funds, scientist's salaries suddenly terminated with no notice (and there's no statutory redundancy in this caper either), jobs lost at the organisation itself. And their website is still up, accepting donations, which will probably now just go into settling debts, not funding research.

              No doubt one of the other bodies will take over the charitable brand.

              It's no way to run an important endeavour.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: AC above

            @Schultz,

            Thanks for reading it. I'm anticipating the Pulitzer being delivered any day now...

            "You did a good job laying out the problems of the current system. Unfortunately there is no easy solution to improve the publication business and science funding."

            Like many aspects of our society it's the worst possible way of running science, but it's not as bad as all the others... Winston Churchill said something similar about democracy.

            "ITER is a great idea? Maybe, or maybe we should invest more in smaller scientific projects because the fusion thing just is not ready yet (and spending billions at a time may not be the most efficient way of getting there)."

            Well the predecessor to ITER (JET at Culham in the UK) wildly over delivered. A long time ago (1970s) that community set out a plan to develop functional nuclear fusion, and so far they're ahead of plan. And because it's an organised community with government funding from many nations there's a ton of cooperation; everyone gets to share the spoils and glory, and it really is "for the common good". And one thing we know for sure is that the bigger your Tokomac, the easier it is to keep the reaction going. Given the success of JET it's definitely worth investing in the larger ITER.

        2. Barry Mahon

          Re: False

          Thanks Anonymous Coward - just carry on being anonymous. If you really believed that rant why not say who you are??

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: False

            "Thanks Anonymous Coward - just carry on being anonymous. If you really believed that rant why not say who you are??"

            Because, Barry, I'm not completely stupid. (carefully checks the Post Anonymously tick box)

            1. Barry Mahon

              Re: False

              Thanks, so it would appear you are a paper submitter? The real issue with OA reluctance is a thing called "impact factor" which was originally created as a mathematical calculation based on citations, but is now treated as a publicity element for the "quality" of a journal.

              It MIGHT be useful but impact doesn't take into account articles which describe basic technques, for example. These articles are quoted by everybody who uses the same technique, thereby increasing the impact factor. The article may not be about the same subject as the original, only using the same technique.

              1. Saul Dobney

                Re: False

                It would be relatively easy to add a weighting to the impact factor that favoured open access papers. Though probably a small effect to start with, over time it would accumulate as more papers get directed to open access in preference to similar clsed access journals.

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: False

                @Barry Mahon,

                "Thanks, so it would appear you are a paper submitter?"

                No, I'm an engineer working in a completely unrelated field. Doesn't mean that I don't pay attention elsewhere.

                As someone who is used to doing requirements engineering for large projects one looks at parts of the world of science and weep. It's soooo badly run it's a disgrace. Yet they're allowed to run themselves this way because no one outside their domain can get away with discrediting them.

  2. Efros

    Not before time!

    Forty quid for a single pdf, that I wrote!

    1. Warm Braw

      Re: Not before time!

      I notice you mention no names. Else severe action might follow, perhaps.

      1. a pressbutton
        Coat

        Re: Not before time!

        Welcome's words are like a straw in the wind that was harvested from a marshy area.

        Pun overextension failure imminent

    2. Tom 7

      Re: Not before time!

      A single PDF what you rote! And didnt get paid for and was peer reviewed by someone(s) who didnt get paid.

      A lot of the journals are collecting statistically relevant urine samples and pouring them down our backs.

      They realised soon after the early growth of the web there only survival mechanisms were good journalism (which they'd have to pay for) or virtual monopoly. I do hope we can break that monopoly down.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Lead by example

    Perhaps the Trust should lead by example and publish its own open access journals. A journal with the Wellcome name behind it would to a great deal to raise the status of OA publication.

    There'd possibly be a challenge on conflict of interest. At least in the first instance it might restrict papers to those reporting work it hadn't funded, possibly in areas that it doesn't fund at all.

    1. Roq D. Kasba

      Re: Lead by example

      I totally agree - the way around the challenges would be having an 'intent to publish' section which all papers MUST pre-register with before the study begins. That way, any results, favourable or otherwise, are discoverable (even if they never publish because the results are unfavourable, the declaration means you can't just continually run studies until getting the 'right' answer by sheer weight of numbers) and goes a long way to proving openness in both ethos and access.

      Or they could start off with everything but Medical journals, and let an engineering firm pick up the Medical one to sponsor ;-)

    2. rosso

      Re: Lead by example

      Wellcome does publish an Open Access journal. It is called eLife.

      Not only is access free, publishing there is also free (for as long as it lasts).

      Check it out, there are interesting studies there.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Lead by example

        @ rosso

        "Wellcome does publish an Open Access journal. It is called eLife."

        Wellcome is one of three supporters, whatever that might mean. The registered address is in Delaware & the UK address is in Cambridge. Without the Wellcome name it the title it'll have to make its own reputation - which I hope it does. What I had in mind would be something like The Wellcome Journal of $subject or Proceedings of the Wellcome Institute which would make direct use of the Wellcome's reputation along the lines of Proc.Roy.Soc.

        1. rosso

          Re: Lead by example

          Correct: Wellcome, Max Planck and Howard Hughes all put money into this.

          Together they represent a substantial force in the biomedical world.

          They figured that only that united way they can compete with Nature/Science.

          The other option ('The Wellcome journal of ..') would quickly descent to oblivion.

  4. Paratrooping Parrot
    Boffin

    I would love this idea, but...

    The problem with Open Access at the moment is the number of predatory journals that are about. There are websites that claim to list predatory journals, but I have heard that some of those websites had secret payments.

    What we need is someone well known and reputable like the Wellcome Trust to create open access journals that we can submit to. Predatory journals request large sums of money and they claim to have papers proof read and so on, but they don't.

  5. bitmap animal

    The Wellcome Collection

    Slightly off topic but they have a free permanent exhibition at The Wellcome Collection which is less than five minutes walk from Euston Station. There is usually also an exhibition which runs for a few months on quite diverse medical based topics. Well worth a visit if you are ever in the area.

  6. John Savard

    Reputation

    It certainly is true that there are some open-access journals that primarily exist to give undeserved credibility to what is sometimes politely called fringe science. The journals that are well-established and recognized, unfortunately, are the ones that charge high fees. But then, quite apart from the costs of paper and ink, overseeing an effective peer-review process costs money.

    1. David Pollard

      Re: Reputation

      Peer review does indeed cost money. But there's no reason in principle why the process should not be largely automatic. The expensive part, reading, assessing and commenting on papers received, could be required as pseudo-payment for publication. In return for publication of their own paper each author would be required to review maybe four or five papers in the same field.

      1. DavCrav

        Re: Reputation

        "The expensive part, reading, assessing and commenting on papers received, could be required as pseudo-payment for publication."

        It is already done free of charge by academics, even for for-profit publishers.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The ArXiv

    Led the way on this.

    Btw. I remember back in the days when it was hosted at xxx.lanl.gov and some people complained they couldn't access it because of their employer's pornography filters (the 'xxx' bit--filters were that naive back then). Their response: "Not a problem. Most of what we publish *is* pornography anyway" :-)

  8. DrD'eath

    Sci-hub

    I thought all journal were open access

    1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

      Open access

      > I thought all journal were open access

      A painful experience that it turns out was doing me a favour. With access to unlimited information I would have been swamped with mostly wrong information.

      After killing Aaron Swartz the MiT put all their stuff on line, most of it that I have seen on You Tube is unwatchable. But you don't expect quality control on You Tube. It seems like the Internet was designed just for people who liked poor visibility, crappy audio and unviable projects.

      1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

        Re: Open access

        Too late to edit my post but:

        The arXiv.org website is under all-too-frequent attack from robots, spiders and accelerators that mindlessly download every link encountered, ultimately trying to access the entire database through the listings links. Obviously, large search engines offer an invaluable service to web users and we work with them to find efficient and effective ways to index arXiv content. In many cases, however, we are subject to accidental denial-of-service attacks by well-intentioned but thoughtless novices, ignorant of common sense guidelines.

        Following the de-facto standard for robot exclusion, this site has maintained since early 1994 a file /robots.txt that specifies those URL's that are off-limits to robots (and this "Robots Beware" page was originally posted March 1994).

        Mindlessly downloading all of the URLs on this site will return terabytes of data. This has very real cost to us in terms of bandwidth consumed, and in terms of the responsiveness of our service for our many tens of thousands of real users.

        > After killing Aaron Swartz the MiT put all their stuff on line

        If he was accessing MiT or the above site at Cornell he was costing them money and the prosecution was just so it was most likely the poor human relations that US justice systems employ that caused his suicide. I had always assumed that nice guys finish last because they are capable of keeping going when the arse-holes stop functioning.

        It turns out that the good guys tend to get bumped off by FBI snipers.

  9. J. R. Hartley

    Open access titties.

    Am I the only one?

    1. PNGuinn
      Boffin

      Re: Open access titties.

      "Am I the only one?"

      Yes. Grow up.

    2. Pompous Git Silver badge

      Re: Open access titties.

      Am I the only one?

      No and I blame Queen Elizabeth. The first that is :-)

      https://tudorstuff.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/the-tudors-boobs-exposed/

  10. raving angry loony

    Public research, public access.

    Privately funded research can publish where they (or their backers) want as far as I'm concerned, although they're limiting their results to a certain wealthy class if they choose the expensive models.

    But ANY research that receives public, taxpayer funds should have the requirement that they public in an open-access journal. Public funds should not be used to enrich companies that do nothing but stand between the scientists and public, adding NOTHING to the process except a toll booth.

    1. rosso

      Re: Public research, public access.

      You confuse non-profit with open access. Take for instance the publisher "Frontiers" (recently partly taken over by Nature): they make a lot of profit from open access.

      In one case the author (or rather his government grant) pays, in the other the reader pays.

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