Our Scholarship System is Broke. Can Open Access Fix It?

Our Scholarship System is
Broke.
Can Open Access Fix It?

Alex.Holcombe@sydney.edu.au
School of Psychology

http://www.slideshare.net/holcombea/

@ceptional
Wednesday, 24 October 12 1

Scientist meets Publisher

Academic knowledge is boxed
in by expensive journals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMIY_4t-DR0


operating proﬁt company industry
7% Woolworths supermarkets, pokies
12% BMW automobiles
22% Coca-Cola adding sugar to water
23% Rio Tinto mining
36% Apple premium computing
34% Springer scholarly publishing
36% Elsevier scholarly publishing
42% Wiley scholarly publishing

Thanks to Nick Scott-Samuel
$3983 USD per article for Elsevier
$1350 USD per article for PLoS ONE
Claudio Aspesi at http://poynder.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/open-access-brick-by-brick.html

JOURNAL / PUBLISHER COST ($USD) ACCESS

$10,780 per Subscription
article (not including charges
for color ﬁgures)

$85 per page Open Access

(introductory rate is even cheaper)

$1350 per article Open Access


JOURNAL / PUBLISHER COST ($USD) ACCESS

$10,780 per Subscription
article (not including charges
for color ﬁgures)


(introductory rate is even cheaper)

$1350 per article Open Access

$99 per life Open Access


Monopoly + Proﬁt $ = =
maximization
Broke


OA HULK WANTS TO KNOW WHO TO
OCCUPY!

ELSEVIER!? ACS!? HARPERCOLLINS!?

YOU NAME IT, OA HULK WILL OCCUPY AND
SMASH!

“Open Access Hulk”


started January 2012

$3983 USD per article for Elsevier
$1350 USD per article for PLoS ONE
Claudio Aspesi at http://poynder.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/open-access-brick-by-brick.html

2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012


GREEN ROAD GOLD ROAD
•Deposit your manuscripts in
the university repository Article Processing Charge
(http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/

•Even with closed
journals, you often have
the right to deposit your
ﬁnal version (e.g. Word
document before typeset
by publisher)
$1,350
•Funders, universities should
mandate this.
•Publishers will adapt, as they
have in physics.

$3,000

Stevan Harnad

Requirements from funders that publications be OA
•NIH (US) within 12 months
•Wellcome Trust (UK) within 6 months

•ﬁnal grant payment withheld if you don’t comply
•NHMRC (Australia) within 12 months
•“publications arising from an NHMRC supported research project
must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within
a twelve month period from the date of publication.”
•ARC (Australia)
•You can use DP funds to pay open-access fees, but must be taken
from the funds you were awarded to pay for other things.
•“Strongly encourages” open access, no teeth. Compliance rate very
low.


Open Data: the next step

NHMRC: The next steps will be improving public and other researchers’ access to publicly funded data.
https://theconversation.edu.au/all-research-funded-by-nhmrc-to-be-accessible-free-of-charge-5486


ce is self- correcting always found.
Wh y sci en i sc onduct; it is Ul terior Motiv
es
oint in
p scientific m arkm
M an, Ph.D. in
There's no 0, 2010 by Art ents, it is hard fo
ra
Published on August 1 othe r's experim
s rep
lwayeating each
ntists are a g.
B ecause scie o hang on for very lon
lt t
fictitious resu

The Replicability Crisis

Bayer HealthCare :only about 25% of published
preclinical studies could be validated to the point
Rule among early-stage venture at which projects could continue
capital firms that “at least 50% of
published studies, even those in top- Amgen Fifty-three papers were deemed ‘landmark’
tier academic journals, can't be studies (see ‘Reproducibility of research
repeated with the same conclusions findings’)... scientific findings were confirmed in
by an industrial lab” - Prinz,
Schlange, & Asadullah. Nature Rev.
only 6 (11%) cases
Drug Discov. 10, 712 (2011)


The File-Drawer Problem

unpublished
results
ﬁles

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/nickperez/2569423078 t. magnum


•Difﬁcult to publish non-
replications and replications
•Most journals only publish
papers that “make a novel
unpublished contribution”
results
ﬁles •Reviewers/editors tend to hold
non-replicating manuscript to
higher standard than original.

•Bem


•Little career incentive to publish
a non-replication or a replication



Corollary 4: The greater the
flexibility in designs, definitions,
outcomes, and analytical modes in
a scientific field, the less likely the
research findings are to be true.
Flexibility increases the potential for
transforming what would be “negative”
results into “positive” results.


Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more
scientific teams involved), the less likely the research
findings are to be true.



Corollary 4: The greater the
flexibility in designs, definitions,
outcomes, and analytical modes in
a scientific field, the less likely the
research findings are to be true.
Flexibility increases the potential for
transforming what would be “negative”
results into “positive” results.

t
at mos
idis th
Ioann
ith
ree w
le we ag .”
ry, whi e false..
“In s umma ings ar Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more
fi nd
res earch scientific teams involved), the less likely the research
findings are to be true.


Barriers to publishing replications and failed-
replications

• No glory in publishing a replication
• Few journals publish replications
• usually uphill battle even with
those that do
• The wrath of the original researcher


File-drawer fixes
• Journals that don’t reject
replications for being
uninteresting or unimportant
◦ • ✔

• Pre-registration of study designs
and analysis methods
◦ ✔ ◦

• Brief reporting of replications
◦ ✔ ◦


File-drawer fixes
• Journals that don’t reject
replications as being
uninteresting or unimportant
◦ • ✔

• Pre-registration of study designs
and analysis methods
◦ ✔ ◦

• Brief reporting of replications
◦ ✔ ◦


preregistered Replication Reports
Dan Simons

1. Authors plan a replication study
2. They submit an introduction and methods section

3. Sent to reviewers, including author of to-be-replicated article

4. Editor decides whether to accept/reject, based on:

1. Reviewer comments regarding the proposed protocol

2. Importance of original study, judged by argument in the
introduction, number of citations of original, reviewer
comments

5. The Intro, Method and analysis plan, and reviewer comments
are posted on the journal website ✔ ✔ ✔
6. After the results come in, the authors submit a conventional
results and discussion section and that together with the raw
data are posted, yielding the complete publication


preregistered Replication Reports

• Original author signed off on it, so can’t complain / hate
the replication authors as much.
• Good way to start for a new PhD student, anyone
planning to build on some already-published results
• Will post the raw data ✔ ✔ ✔
• Will facilitate, publish meta-analyses when replications
accrue
• Reduce the incentive to publish ﬂashy, headline-grabbing
but unreliable studies?

at Psychological Science?


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