Communicating in an Open World

Jon Tennant@protohedgehog

Hi• Dinosaur hunter• Freelance science writer• Children’s book author and

consultant• Tweets occasionally• Representing myself, as these

comments are likely to be quite irresponsible

@protohedgehog

My journey into the ‘Open World’• I blame everything on Ross

Mounce (@rmounce)• It took a lot of paywall hitting for

it to finally hit me..• The more I learned..• OpenCon as a turning point• Frustration led to anger, anger

led to hate, then I kinda calmed down..

@protohedgehog

Things Open is about to researchers

• Freedom• Equality•Access

•Knowledge• Education

Things Open is about to publishers

•Mandates•Policy

•Article charges• Embargoes•Compliance

We have a huge language problem

We are often having VERY different conversations about exactly the same thing

@protohedgehog

Take that website as an example..[Some] Researchers• Liberation• Freedom• Justice• Necessary• Disruptive• Convenient

[Some] Publishers• Theft• Stealing • Damaging• Piracy• Illegal• Hacking

We end up talking past each other, instead of working together to find solutions

@protohedgehog

Open is really ridiculously complicated• Librarians: serials crisis• Researchers: more visibility/citations• Economists: helps small businesses• Activists: morality, freedom, equality• Publishers: money money money (profit)• Funders: money money money (cost)• Editors: want quality content published• Policymakers: have to resolve all of this

@protohedgehog

What is Open?•A vision•A statement•A cultural movement•A social restructuring•A way of thinking

@protohedgehog

What is Open not?•A business•A restriction•A fad•Socially exclusive•Shallow

@protohedgehog

Why should we care about Open?• Reduce costs for libraries

• Funds can then be redistributed• Reduce competition for funding

• Students and researchers can access what they need• Also everyone else on the planet too

• Cease journal business models defining where we can publish• Provide freedom of publishing venue without constraint

• Publishing should be easy to afford even for the non-financially privileged• Align research with what the Web was designed for

• Efficient and free knowledge transfer

@protohedgehog

Disclaimer: some people get pretty angry when you talk about ‘open’ publishing..

If you suffer from high blood pressure, it’s probably best to sit this part out.

Credit: Sallaria (DeviantArt)@protohedgehog

BARRIERS

How does any of this help?

@protohedgehog

Total (as of 2016-02-05): 80,629,821You can get up-to-date data at: http://api.crossref.org/works?facet=t&rows=0

Credit: @blahah404Wow! Such data! We must be learning loads, right?!

@protohedgehog

Same data by license type

Just 1,435,841 (as of 2016-02-05) are legally reusable. That's less than 1.8% of the published research literature.

LOL NOPE

Credit: @blahah404@protohedgehog

Which is odd. Because you paid for it.

Credit: @blahah404

Because of these publishers Credit: @blahah404

@protohedgehog

So what we have is a system that is..• Largely funded by the public• Governed by private interests• Restricted in terms of what we

can do with it• Access is a financial or status

privilege• The actual communication is

secondary to the business model

http://whyopenresearch.org/@protohedgehog

When publishers fail to innovate

https://thewinnower.com/papers/45-open-letter-to-the-american-association-for-the-advancement-of-sciencehttps://thewinnower.com/papers/73-aaas-misses-opportunity-to-advance-open-access @protohedgehog

@protohedgehog

Financial transparencyPrice transparency for libraries for journal and database packages – non-disclosure agreements shut down the market

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmbis/uc1086-i/uc108601.htm

BIS Select Committee enquiry into Open Access, 2013

• Subscription expenditure of UK higher education institutions with ten publishers: £93,766,870

https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.72/

Model of Financial Flows in Scholarly Publishing for the UK, 2014.

“The current lack of publicly available information concerning financial flows around scholarly communication systems is an obstacle to evidence-based policy-making – leaving researchers, decision-makers and institutions in the dark about the implications of current models and the resources available for experimenting with new ones.”

Financial transparency

https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/1998/feed_items/135763

https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/scholarly-publishers-and-their-high-profits/

@protohedgehog

Financial transparency

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/apcs-and-subscriptions

What on Earth is going on up here?

@protohedgehog

It’s like some publishers aren’t even trying

https://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2016/03/23/wellcome-trust-and-coaf-open-access-spend-2014-15/

@protohedgehog

Financial transparency for authors• What is the APC being spent on?• How much does each part of the

process really cost?

http://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/publish/

https://elifesciences.org/elife-news/inside-elife-setting-fee-publication

@protohedgehog

Open peer reviewHow is something secretive, exclusive, and closed supposed to be

objective?

@protohedgehog

An adventure with “Publisher X”• That awkward moment when a

publisher breaches your copyright• No formal confidentiality agreement• No informal agreement• Zero information provided

• Intervention via Publons• No notification of takedown• Conducted without my permission• In breach of my rights as a reviewer• Restricting the free flow of information• What the hell were they thinking?

@protohedgehog

The result?• Publisher X committed an act of copyright

infringement against one of their unpaid volunteer reviewers• Publisher X attempted to over-rule my own

personal copyright with zero legal authority• Completely unenforceable• Publisher X either acted against my permission• Or believe they had copyright, which they did

not

@protohedgehog

It works both ways, you know..

http://www.thelogofactory.com/

But…• It’s kinda understandable from

the Editor’s perspective• They have confidentiality interests

to consider

• This needs to be much more explicit a priori• All are responsible for making

sure the process is more transparent

@protohedgehog

Since the incident..

@protohedgehog

It’s just as ‘enforceable’ as any of the previous, so why not?

The lessons?• Be very explicit beforehand

1. About journal policies2. About the conditions of reviewing3. What everyone’s rights are

• Be open with your communications• Transparency alleviates all problems

• Don’t bully researchers• Don’t try and enforce things illegally• Talk with Publons• Consider open options

@protohedgehog

@protohedgehog

It should not be this complicated!

Aspects of open peer review1. Publish the review reports2. Referees are named3. Anyone is allowed to contribute4. What is the decision process based

on? 5. How many reviews are declined

before a sufficient number of referees are obtained?

6. What was the time taken for each part of the process?

@protohedgehog

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21604089-two-big-recent-scientific-results-are-looking-shakyand-it-open-peer-review

Open up the entire process!• How long does it take for:

• Reviewing (each round, don’t hide them)• Copy editing and proofing• Editorial decisions

• Use this to create a time line of the expected process• Many publishers already experimenting/doing this:

• EMBO• PeerJ• ELife• Nature Communications• Frontiers

And, I might be wrong about this, but no-one has died yet..

@protohedgehog

Let’s talk about the impact factor..

@protohedgehog

Credit: Hilda Bastian

http://www.nature.com/news/beat-it-impact-factor-publishing-elite-turns-against-controversial-metric-1.20224

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/05/062109

Because it’s a BS statistic

Skew is imposed by a very small number of highly cited papers

What can we all do?• We have to break the chain• Stop advertising• Stop using it to evaluate

• Communicate openly• And informedly

• Publish better statistics• Citation distributions

• Accept responsibility for its misuse• ALL of us are accountable

http://www.ascb.org/dora/@protohedgehog

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291/full

Other things that don’t fit into the narrative that well..• What is the true value add of publishing?• Well, let’s see..• No format diversity and stupidly strict rules• Very little usage statistics (outsourced mostly)• References rarely hyperlinked (and not deeply)• Networking features rare and terrible• Overlay systems practically non-existent

• Again often outsourced too• Supplemental files considered an afterthought• Size constraints

@protohedgehog

The current state of scholarly communication?

Slowly but surely adapting to the Web of

1995

@protohedgehog

Key messages• Open communication is a necessity in a digital scholarly publishing

world• People expect different standards growing up in a Web-dominated era• Open communication affects all parts of the scholarly publishing

process, not just Open Access• Ask ourselves constantly, are we doing the best we can? How is this

helping research communication?• Open communication is just a gateway to transparency,

accountability, and equality