Issue #81
by Michael Seadle (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
In the International Science Council’s blog¹ (2 July 2024), Geoffrey Boulton and Moumita Koley discuss the reality of access to scientific publication. They see two problems: “Firstly, although many scientific journals and papers maintain high standards, too many lack proper editorial oversight, many lack rigour and integrity, some engage in fraudulent practices, few observe the most basic of scientific essentials, that evidential data and metadata for a truth claim should be exposed in parallel to a published paper, and agreed standards for overall governance of the process are lacking.”² This is a relatively harsh judgment, but the evidence for it appears again and again in sites like Retraction Watch*. The second problem addresses the business models of the journals, and the effect that has on who can publish: “... the business models of commercial publishers are based on appropriation of scientific output which is then sold on to readers’ institutions at levels of profitability in excess of 30-40%, (Buranyi, 2017)³ a financial barrier to readers or authors or both that particularly penalizes those in low- and middle-income countries where public funding for science is limited.”²
The authors note that the problem today is not just getting published – it is getting read by the right people. “So-called ‘high impact journals’ offer such access, but at a high price. To rely on such a process when sorting algorithms could readily generate source-agnostic lists of relevant papers and agreed minimum standards could exert quality control reflects a dramatic lack of system governance from the scientific community and a silent acceptance of the actions of commercial publishers.”² Silent acceptance by the publishers is not the only problem. Many university administrators like such lists because it saves them effort. The institutions that create university rankings “... utilize bibliometrics and other indices to generate ordinal lists of university excellence and have persuaded many governments to target funding with the express purpose of enhancing the ranking of selected universities. A key part of such processes is to incentivize publication by academics to increase a university’s total bibliometric score.”²
The point the authors are making is, as the title suggests, incentives for more publication does not guarantee better quality. Unfortunately quality is hard to measure and numbers are not.
2: Boulton, Geoffrey, and Moumita Koley. “More Is Not Better: The Developing Crisis of Scientific Publishing.” International Science Council, July 2, 2024. https://council.science/blog/more-is-not-better-the-developing-crisis-of-scientific-publishing/.
3: Buranyi, Stephen. “Is the Staggeringly Profitable Business of Scientific Publishing Bad for Science?” The Guardian, June 27, 2017, sec. Science. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science.
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