I sometimes do wonder how the current push for paid open access publications is going to lead to a further inflation of the system of "famous lab produces famous researchers".
We often get solely/mostly judged based on our publications. (I wish it wouldn't be the case, but it often boils down to that.)
And high publishing costs quickly become restrictive to different labs. Only those (usually big) and well funded labs can afford to pay multiple "high impact" publication fees a year. Which in turn increases their likelihood of winning a grant, attracting new recruits, publishing "high impact "again etc. and becoming an even more "famous lab".
Meanwhile those smaller (newer?), not so well funded labs can no longer consistently shine through their work alone.
And when it comes to gaining a next position: Who will have the "better" cv, just due to the funding status of their previous employer?
I fear this will lead to people seeking out "famous" labs for their employment even more. Thereby essentially becoming an even stronger culture of gatekeeping by who is "famous" versus "who isn't".
Liz, when you say "published", it seems you mean "published in a peer-reviewed journal". It is a good phenom that more and more institutions no longer distinguish between a preprint and a peer-reviewed publication, and consider a preprint as published output.
Also, regarding Basti's comment above, I would like to push back. The costs for the effort that goes into a typical molecular biology paper from a Global North lab is something like 250,000$ for salaries with benefits (guesstimate of 3 years average for 1 doctoral/postdoctoral researcher, plus 3 years of 10% PI salary), 50,000$ in consumables etc., 150,000$ in overhead, so on the order of 450,000$. So 5,000$ in APCs (article processing charges) adds about 1% to the total cost. Also, please remember that the goal is of course that eventually there will be no more subscription costs, and that OA publishing will be at least cost neutral, if not leading to overall cost savings for academia.
In the interest of full disclosure: I'm Deputy Editor of an OA journal, and I'm remunerated for my work as an editor.
Detlef! Thank you for your thoughts! Regarding "more and more institutions no longer distinguish between a preprint and a peer-reviewed publication, and consider a preprint as published output"--I think this is an exciting goal, and I know that we've made steps in this direction. A preprint is an accepted output in many places, but it does not (yet) have nearly the impact as a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm not aware of any institutions that truly don't distinguish between them (yet).
I'm a big advocate for preprints, but also acknowledge the impact and acceptance that publication in a peer reviewed journal can provide to those from less well-known institutions and with smaller professional networks. I think we are moving in the right direction, but are not there yet.
As for your second point, $5000 may be small potatoes (plant pun!) in the scheme of things, and especially for well-funded labs, but all that matters is that it FEELS like a lot to pay for many labs--and many (including me, on occasion!) choose to go a cheaper non-open access route. I doubt Basti was suggesting that we eliminate open access fees, but that we as a community pay attention to the way many small differences can add up to compound the differences between labs that feel like they can spend and labs that don't.
I agree that there is a long road ahead regarding preprints and so on, but I am guardedly optimistic. And that my 1% comment is not comforting when a lab is strapped for cash is of course entirely understandable, and I am very much sympathetic to this!
This feels like an entire post unto itself: "'Publishing' means paying a journal thousands of dollars to handle peer review and dissemination of your work. So, with the “it’s not science if it’s not published” philosophy, we limit who can do science to those who can pay. As a result, there are documented geographical biases in publication rates." The same is not necessarily true for literary scholarship (most peer-review submissions are free). But it's certainly true for literary magazines that don't read submissions blindly, and that charge a $3 reading fee. Given that many writers are celebrating 200+ rejections per year, that's a lot of cash to be shelling out for the chance to be published, for no compensation other than perceived achievement. It has a chilling effect on low-income writers.
However, it raises an ethical question that I don't think academe has been able to answer. Much of the work of peer review has been done pro bono. Maybe it's different in the sciences, but in the humanities, people maybe get a course release for editing a major journal. Reviewers get nothing at all for their time, which is often considerable. Compensating editors and reviewers fairly would seem reasonable, but asking scientists submitting their work to provide this compensation is not. Because higher ed is built on a nonprofit structure, that creates an intractable dilemma. The older models of state funding are fading. But the newer models of private fundraising aren't necessarily better. In some cases, those systems create new channels for nepotism and other forms of equality.
The final question, if I'm not piling on, is perhaps an obvious one, and I hope not annoying. The original purpose of peer review is to curate knowledge, so that what's published is reliable. As you say, the older model of peer review was not necessarily a guarantee of reliability. Some might say that the truth will out, but we can't rely on recent exposes about falsified data in scholarship about cheating and honesty to flag questionable research. There ought to be a more reliable mechanism for vetting new knowledge. One would think that relying on experts in the field would be the only way. What's a different path? I don't know the answer, myself.
This is all absolutely true in the sciences as well. There is a bit of a push to pay reviewers, but in the end academics do free work that benefits both science writ large and the profit margin of the journals. There are many out there imagining new ways of doing things, but that is the current system.
As Basti points out below, the move to open access as an expensive symbol of prestige adds another layer.
The preprint system (like BioRxiv) is an interesting development. You post your work for free and others can comment -- post-publication peer review. The problems there are 1) some real crap gets posted, serious misinformation and 2) it can be hard to get comments or reviews, especially in small fields. We’ve also seen our work copied from a preprint in someone else’s published paper.
All to say that your “more of a comment than a question” above is far from annoying but is exactly on point. But the good news is that there are many working to imagine new systems.
I sometimes do wonder how the current push for paid open access publications is going to lead to a further inflation of the system of "famous lab produces famous researchers".
We often get solely/mostly judged based on our publications. (I wish it wouldn't be the case, but it often boils down to that.)
And high publishing costs quickly become restrictive to different labs. Only those (usually big) and well funded labs can afford to pay multiple "high impact" publication fees a year. Which in turn increases their likelihood of winning a grant, attracting new recruits, publishing "high impact "again etc. and becoming an even more "famous lab".
Meanwhile those smaller (newer?), not so well funded labs can no longer consistently shine through their work alone.
And when it comes to gaining a next position: Who will have the "better" cv, just due to the funding status of their previous employer?
I fear this will lead to people seeking out "famous" labs for their employment even more. Thereby essentially becoming an even stronger culture of gatekeeping by who is "famous" versus "who isn't".
Exactly right. I remember budgeting $2000 US dollars for publishing in my first grant and then realizing we’d need ten times that.
This is really nuanced and thoughtful -- so many layers.
Liz, when you say "published", it seems you mean "published in a peer-reviewed journal". It is a good phenom that more and more institutions no longer distinguish between a preprint and a peer-reviewed publication, and consider a preprint as published output.
Also, regarding Basti's comment above, I would like to push back. The costs for the effort that goes into a typical molecular biology paper from a Global North lab is something like 250,000$ for salaries with benefits (guesstimate of 3 years average for 1 doctoral/postdoctoral researcher, plus 3 years of 10% PI salary), 50,000$ in consumables etc., 150,000$ in overhead, so on the order of 450,000$. So 5,000$ in APCs (article processing charges) adds about 1% to the total cost. Also, please remember that the goal is of course that eventually there will be no more subscription costs, and that OA publishing will be at least cost neutral, if not leading to overall cost savings for academia.
In the interest of full disclosure: I'm Deputy Editor of an OA journal, and I'm remunerated for my work as an editor.
Cheers,
Detlef Weigel
Detlef! Thank you for your thoughts! Regarding "more and more institutions no longer distinguish between a preprint and a peer-reviewed publication, and consider a preprint as published output"--I think this is an exciting goal, and I know that we've made steps in this direction. A preprint is an accepted output in many places, but it does not (yet) have nearly the impact as a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm not aware of any institutions that truly don't distinguish between them (yet).
I'm a big advocate for preprints, but also acknowledge the impact and acceptance that publication in a peer reviewed journal can provide to those from less well-known institutions and with smaller professional networks. I think we are moving in the right direction, but are not there yet.
As for your second point, $5000 may be small potatoes (plant pun!) in the scheme of things, and especially for well-funded labs, but all that matters is that it FEELS like a lot to pay for many labs--and many (including me, on occasion!) choose to go a cheaper non-open access route. I doubt Basti was suggesting that we eliminate open access fees, but that we as a community pay attention to the way many small differences can add up to compound the differences between labs that feel like they can spend and labs that don't.
I agree that there is a long road ahead regarding preprints and so on, but I am guardedly optimistic. And that my 1% comment is not comforting when a lab is strapped for cash is of course entirely understandable, and I am very much sympathetic to this!
This feels like an entire post unto itself: "'Publishing' means paying a journal thousands of dollars to handle peer review and dissemination of your work. So, with the “it’s not science if it’s not published” philosophy, we limit who can do science to those who can pay. As a result, there are documented geographical biases in publication rates." The same is not necessarily true for literary scholarship (most peer-review submissions are free). But it's certainly true for literary magazines that don't read submissions blindly, and that charge a $3 reading fee. Given that many writers are celebrating 200+ rejections per year, that's a lot of cash to be shelling out for the chance to be published, for no compensation other than perceived achievement. It has a chilling effect on low-income writers.
However, it raises an ethical question that I don't think academe has been able to answer. Much of the work of peer review has been done pro bono. Maybe it's different in the sciences, but in the humanities, people maybe get a course release for editing a major journal. Reviewers get nothing at all for their time, which is often considerable. Compensating editors and reviewers fairly would seem reasonable, but asking scientists submitting their work to provide this compensation is not. Because higher ed is built on a nonprofit structure, that creates an intractable dilemma. The older models of state funding are fading. But the newer models of private fundraising aren't necessarily better. In some cases, those systems create new channels for nepotism and other forms of equality.
The final question, if I'm not piling on, is perhaps an obvious one, and I hope not annoying. The original purpose of peer review is to curate knowledge, so that what's published is reliable. As you say, the older model of peer review was not necessarily a guarantee of reliability. Some might say that the truth will out, but we can't rely on recent exposes about falsified data in scholarship about cheating and honesty to flag questionable research. There ought to be a more reliable mechanism for vetting new knowledge. One would think that relying on experts in the field would be the only way. What's a different path? I don't know the answer, myself.
This is all absolutely true in the sciences as well. There is a bit of a push to pay reviewers, but in the end academics do free work that benefits both science writ large and the profit margin of the journals. There are many out there imagining new ways of doing things, but that is the current system.
As Basti points out below, the move to open access as an expensive symbol of prestige adds another layer.
The preprint system (like BioRxiv) is an interesting development. You post your work for free and others can comment -- post-publication peer review. The problems there are 1) some real crap gets posted, serious misinformation and 2) it can be hard to get comments or reviews, especially in small fields. We’ve also seen our work copied from a preprint in someone else’s published paper.
All to say that your “more of a comment than a question” above is far from annoying but is exactly on point. But the good news is that there are many working to imagine new systems.