A while back, I talked about how science publishing is undergoing a Marxist revolution. Today, Seth Godin notes:Travel agents... gone.
Stock brokers... gone.
Real estate brokers... in trouble. Photographer’s agents, too.
Literary agents?
The problem with being a helpful, efficient but largely anonymous middleman is pretty obvious. Someone can come along who is cheaper, faster and more efficient. And that someone might be the customer aided by a computer.
If specialized scientific publishers want to survive, Godin points out a way:
Middlemen add value when they bring taste or judgment or trust to bear on a transaction that isn’t transparent. ... To thrive in a world of self-service, agents have to hyperspecialize, have to stand for something, have to have the guts to say no far more than they say yes.
Right now, there are still research journals that do this. Science, Nature, and Cell, although sometimes derided as “glamour mags,” do this: they make judgments about what constitutes cutting edge science. They say “No” a lot.
So the real pressure of open access, and that everyone can have a printing press and distribution channel, is going to weigh upon, not the top journals, but the many other journals that publish most of the bread and butter, meat and potatoes scientific research. What can a journal do that’s going to add value for either the authors or their readers that’s above and beyond what an author can do herself? Here are a few thoughts:
- Develop a review system that checks for scientific fraud as well as scientific rigour.
- Become more active in revising manuscripts for clarity.
- Offer more assistance revising graphics.
- Create long-term archival materials, perhaps more than just the published text.
- Retain scientific reviewers to ensure fast turnaround on review times. Days, not weeks or months.
Any other suggestions? What could a journal do that would be “a dream come true” for the authors?
Develop a review system that checks for scientific fraud as well as scientific rigour.
ReplyDeleteBecome more active in revising manuscripts for clarity.
I like the principle of journals serving authors better. But what they actually do about it? I'm not sure. Your suggestions don't excite me:
Develop a review system that checks for scientific fraud as well as scientific rigour.
That's a service to the reader, not author. As an author who doesn't engage in fraud, I don't want to spend my money on having someone verify that. And if I were an author who did engage in fraud, that would go double.
Become more active in revising manuscripts for clarity.
I actively do not want the journal messing with my language -- especially not when my papers are often full of terminology that I know much better than they do.
Offer more assistance revising graphics.
I don't feel any need for that; and if I did, I'd engage someone professionally, not expect it to be part of a "publishing" parcel.
Create long-term archival materials, perhaps more than just the published text.
This is important, but plenty of other people (arXiv, PMC, FigShare, etc.) do it better than publishers, and at no cost to me.
Retain scientific reviewers to ensure fast turnaround on review times. Days, not hours.
Now we're talking: but what do you mean by "retain"? If you mean employ full-time reviewers, no thanks -- they can't possibly be specialised enough to do a good job. So how are you going to coerce specialists into turning reviews around more quickly? Hopefully not by paying them, which would introduce another unhelpful conflict of interest.
In short, I don't think there's anything publishers can usefully do for me, other than managing peer-review and actually publishing -- XML translation, formatting, public posting, etc. (That's why PLOS and PeerJ are doing so well: they do only those things, and so them well.)