Do we need a radical alternative to scientific publishing? Premium

Scientific publishing is necessary for career success, but the current publishing model extracts a steep cost. We need new alternatives that deviate from marginal changes, which won’t dislodge existing bad research-publishing practices. India’s science academies can also agree on a research evaluation metric that journals and funders can use when evaluating research work.

Scientific publishing is a necessary component of scientists’ efforts to establish a career in science for themselves. The process allows for scientists’ peers to enrich new findings by reviewing papers, curates research from scientists across the world, and signals the credibility of some scientific work.

One important drawback of the extant publishing model worldwide is that it extracts a steep cost for this value addition – in the form of substantial subscription fees or substantial article processing charges (APCs). These models impose a considerable disadvantage on those operating with smaller research budgets, by limiting their ability to publish in ‘good’ journals and to access new research.

Many calls for open-access publishing continue to identify ways to make science more accessible by increasing the funds available to pay subscription fees or APCs. But doing so will only reinforce the current market model, which has been cornered by a few publishing houses, and slow innovation in the way we disseminate science.

It may be wiser to create new alternatives to publishing houses themselves rather than determine how to fund more open-access publishing within the existing system. For this to happen, science societies and academies could cooperate for a novel way to evaluate scientific work.

Currently, publishing houses coordinate three aspects of the publication process: peer-review, formatting, and publishing. Given recent technological advances, are publishing houses best-suited for this process?

Consider formatting, for example. Likely the simplest of these three activities, formatting is crucial to the way end-users consume the information in a scientific paper. But in this day and age, journals’ standard format may actually be a constraint. Papers are typically required to have sections called ‘abstract’, ‘introduction’, ‘methods’, ‘results’, and ‘discussion’, in that order. There is an implicit expectation to write the paper in technical language readable only by other scholars working on the same topic.

Instead, perhaps a short video of the scientist performing her experiment may better communicate the impact of her work to her peers and the people at large. Or a comic strip to help non-experts get interested in the work. Or perhaps a slide deck, like the ones consultants use, can better entice funders.