For decades, scientific journals were the only way to communicate new research findings. Up until today, very little has changed in that respect. The overwhelming majority of all scientific journals still functions as they did in the times when there was no Internet, no social networks or crowd-based knowledge platforms. Is this form of dissemination of research findings still suitable in the 21st century? Slides of a plenary talk by Alexander Grossmann presented at Research Center Julich, Germany on Dec 21, 2016.

1. New Perspectives
in Scientific Publishing –
Perspektiven des
wissenschaftlichen Publizierens
Forschungszentrum Jülich
21. Dezember 2016
Alexander Grossmann
HTWK Leipzig and ScienceOpen
Alexander GrossmannPerspectives in Scientific Publishing

2. 2
Perspectives in Scientific Publishing
Scholarly publishing worldwide
Current status
Scientific communication tomorrow?
Quality assessment: new models
Summary: Perspectives

3. 3
Scholarly Publishing worldwide
All types of scholarly publishing worldwide
STM (Scientific, Technical, Medical) only, English only
Revenues (2013): USD 24.5 billion
journals: USD 10b (2008: USD 8b)
books: USD 5b
Split by territories:
U.S.: 55%
Europe/Middle East: 28%
Asia/Pacific: 14%
From: STM Report 4th Ed. 2015, Mark Ware

4. 4
Scholarly Publishing worldwide
Revenues STM:
$24.5b (2013)
Profit Margin:
31 to 38% (EBITDA) 25%
13%
12%11%
9%
30%
Top 5 Global STM Publishers
Elsevier
Wiley-Blackwell
Springer
Taylor & Francis
ACS
Other

5. 5
Scholarly Publishing worldwide
12m active researchers worldwide in the
scientific, technical & medical areas (STM)
8m researchers in humanities & social sciences (HSS)
24,000 scholarly journals (in STM only)
17,000+ academic societies
2,000 scientific publishers
2m published journal articles per year

6. 6
Scholarly Publishing worldwide
12m active researchers worldwide in the
scientific, technical & medical areas (STM)
8m researchers in humanities & social sciences (HSS)
24,000 scholarly journals (in STM only)
17,000+ academic societies
2,000 scientific publishers
2m published journal articles per year

7. 7
Too much information?
Over 2m new papers per year in STM only…

8. 8
Too much information?
…and about 4m submissions per year.

9. 9
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Problems:
too much information
high rejection rates
slow publication process

10. 10
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Days from receival to acceptance:
no credits for reviewers
expensive subscription pricing
Data source: 3,482 journals in 2014
From: Daniel Himmelstein – https://github.com/dhimmel/plostime

11. 11
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Days from acceptance to publication:
no credits for reviewers
expensive subscription pricing
Data source: 3,482 journals in 2014
From: Daniel Himmelstein – https://github.com/dhimmel/plostime

12. 12
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Problems:
too much information
slow publication process & high rejection rates
anonymous & non-transparent reviewing process
no credits for reviewers
expensive subscription pricing

13. 13
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Journal pricing by discipline (per subscription):
too much information
slow publication process & high rejection rates
anonymous & non-transparent reviewing process
no credits for reviewers
expensive subscription pricing
IF-driven „glamorous journals“ (R. Schekman)
…
USD
1.500
1.000
500
100
USD
1.500
1.000
500
100
Serial crisis

14. 14
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Problems:
too much information
slow publication process & high rejection rates
anonymous & non-transparent reviewing process
no credits for reviewers
expensive subscription pricing
IF-driven „glamorous journals“ (R. Schekman)

15. 15
Scientific Publishing: Present Status
IF not correlated with relevance of article

16. 16
Scientific Publishing: Present Status

17. 17
Scientific Publishing: Present Status?
R. Schekman:
The Guardian
Dec 9 (2013)
Is this the present status…?

18. 18
Scientific Publishing: Present Status?
R. Schekman:
The Guardian
Dec 9 (2013)
…do we need a new culture of sharing?

19. 19
New culture of sharing…
Sharing rather than
ownership:
the new normal for
the next generation.
Creative Commons
CC-BY licenses
supports sharing vs.
ownership model of
copyright.
Image Credit: Bike Sharing Shanghai, John Flickr CC-BY

20. 20
New culture of sharing…
Image Credit: Bike Sharing Shanghai, John Flickr CC-BY
Open Access as sine qua non conditio

21. 21
Open Access Publishing worldwide
Journals:
8,970 journals worldwide (listed in DOAJ)
with 2.2 million (gold) OA articles
Revenues: $172m in 2013 (+34.0%)
Books:
1/3 of publishers have an OA book list
However only 5% of total publishing output
Small growth of OA book list (44% of publishers)
or no growth at all (22%)
Libraries:
OA books listed in the catalogue: 57% yes; 36% no
From: Survey of Publishers Communication Group, 2015, and DOAJ, 2016.

22. 22
Open Access Publishing worldwide
Open Access Article Publication Charges (APC)
2012/13
Quelle: Wellcome Trust 2013(Gold) Open Access fees too high?

23. 23
New culture of communication…
Social Networks
Communities
Crowd-sourcing
Open Data
Open Access
Repositories
Altmetrics
Open Peer Review
Science 2.0
What else do we need…?

24. CC0 Pixabay
Perspectives in Scientific Publishing Alexander Grossmann

25. 25
New projects in scientific communication
1991 2000 2005 2008 2010 2012 2014

26. 26
Open Access and open peer review…

27. 27
Alternative article level metrics…

28. 28
Collaborative writing…

29. 29
Self-promoting and author marketing…

30. 30
More visibility and usage tracking…

31. 31
Publishing in transition...
Ways to publish research today
Directories (linking lists)
Repositories or pre-print server
OA journals (subject-based)
Journal databases (‚mega journals‘)
Aggregation networks
Scientific communication today?

32. 32
Scientific Communication today…
Peer Review
Scientists
= Authors
= Readers
= Reviewers

33. 33
Scientific Communication today…
Source:
Tagesspiegel
(18/6/2014)

34. 34
Scientific Communication today…
Peer Review
Scientists
= Authors
= Readers
= Reviewers
?
?

35. 35
Scientific Communication today…
Peer Review
Scientists
= Authors
= Readers
= Reviewers
?
?
?
?
How to set up such a novel workflow…?

36. 36
Scientific Communication today…
Peer Review
Scientists
= Authors
= Readers
= Reviewers
?
?
?
?
…Scientific communication tomorrow?

37. 37
Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
arXiv
PMC
sciELO
Rep…

38. 38
Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
arXiv
PMC
sciELO
Rep…

39. 39
Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
Dr. C. Conrad
Overlay journal principle
arXiv
PMC
sciELO
Rep…

40. 40
Concept in principal discussed by
Timothy Gowers
University of Cambridge, UK
Fields Medal 1998
Elsevier Boycott 2012 (Cost of Knowledge project)
Massively collaborative Math project Nature 461 879 (2009)
Ideas: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/how-might-we-get-to-a-new-
model-of-mathematical-publishing/.
Launched Discrete Analysis 2016
as an arXiv-based overlay journal
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal
Overlay Journal Principle
Quality assessment…?

41. 41
Concept in principal discussed by
Timothy Gowers
University of Cambridge, UK
Fields Medal 1998
Elsevier Boycott 2012 (Cost of Knowledge project)
Massively collaborative Math project Nature 461 879 (2009)
Ideas: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/how-might-we-get-to-a-new-
model-of-mathematical-publishing/.
Launched Discrete Analysis 2016
as an arXiv-based overlay journal
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal
Overlay Journal Principle
Peer review… in the classical way?

42. 42
Concept in principal discussed by
Timothy Gowers
University of Cambridge, UK
Fields Medal 1998
Elsevier Boycott 2012 (Cost of Knowledge project)
Massively collaborative Math project Nature 461 879 (2009)
Ideas: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/how-might-we-get-to-a-new-
model-of-mathematical-publishing/.
Launched Discrete Analysis 2016
as an arXiv-based overlay journal
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal
Overlay Journal Principle
Public post-publication peer review.

43. 43
Open and public process
Fully transparent:
Who?
Which experience?
What?
Comments and Replies are openly shared
Reviewing not limited to a narrow time frame
Report can be cited (credited by DOI)
Reviewer is acknowledged
Post-publication peer review (PPPR)
See eg: N. Kriegeskorte: Front Comput Neurosci. 6 (2012) 1–18
F1000, The Winnower, ScienceOpen.

44. 44
Open and public process
Fully transparent:
Who?
Which experience?
What?
Comments and Replies are openly shared
Reviewing not limited to a narrow time frame
Report can be cited (credited by DOI)
Reviewer is acknowledged
Post-publication peer review (PPPR)
N. Kriegeskorte: Front Comput Neurosci. 6 (2012) 1–18
Does post-publication peer review work?
See eg: N. Kriegeskorte: Front Comput Neurosci. 6 (2012) 1–18

45. 45
ScienceOpen … peer review statistics
Source: ScienceOpen (2015)

46. 46
Concept has been implemented for all disciplines
and 27+ million papers at ScienceOpen
Overlay Journal and PPPR Principle

47. 47
Open Access
Overlay journal principle
Alternative article metrics
Collaborative writing
Open peer reviewing
Open research data
Self-promotion and author marketing
Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
Publishing as a service…?

48. 48
Again, too much information….?
In summary…

49. 49
Scientific Publishing: Perspectives
Traditional Publishing Current Trends
journals = content containers interdisciplinary database
for specific discipline = „megajournal“ or Collections
IF does not provide information article level metrics (altmetrics)
about relevance of research
no data available open data
limiting article type to open to reproduction papers
original or „new“ research and negative results studies
static publication „living“ document; versioning
closed peer-review open evaluation;
anonymous reviewers post-publication peer-review
no credits for reviewer acknowledgement of reviews
no interaction between (open) communication and
authors and readers active feedback
content is paywalled open access (OA)
library pays for APCs paid by governmental
journal subscriptions or institutional funding partners
authors prefer prestigous and
highly ranked journals to publish ?

50. 50
Literature
www.scienceopen.com/collection/Science20

51. 51
Thank you!
Alexander Grossmann
Prof. Dr. rer. nat.
HTWK Leipzig
University of Applied Sciences
and
ScienceOpen
@SciPubLab
Alexander.Grossmann@htwk-leipzig.de