To publish or not to publish?
It is no secret that the majority of papers published in journals are read by a handful of people. The authors, the reviewers (this can be subjective) and the editors. If publicised the right way, maybe double that. There are some papers which attract a lot of readership, but these are rare species in the trade. When we talk about high citations, does it mean that the articles are read? It is incredible, why do we spend so much time and effort to write a document which is only read by a handful of people? This is indeed the fascinating aspect of science.
Why do we publish? In the universities, the key criteria for assessment and promotions remain publications in scientific journals. Higher impact factor journals are perceived to be "better" than their lower counterparts and consequently it serves as a indicator of the quality of the scientist. Among the scientific community, the papers are like the clothes that adorn you. The more, the higher impact factor, the better. For the more senior people, their names are often associated with journals as part of the editorial board (often for free) while the journals use these names to promote themselves so that more people can submit.
The average paper in the materials science field is often reporting something which is known/not surprising/not novel. Yet, we do it continuously. Scientists subject themselves to a rejection probability of 50 to 90% for the average materials science journal just to get their moment of recognition in the journal eventually. This is such a puzzling behaviour, one that I have been through personally as a PhD student and also during my independent career. We get reviewed by fellow experts, although I am not sure if they really know my area. I know because of the questions that they ask. Some are downright negative. Some encouraging. Some ambivalent and trying to quickly submit their reviews. Most are not useful. Why do I need to subject myself to an unknown reviewer when I can easily email the expert in my field and seek his/her opinion on my work?
Publishing has become more of a business and from a quick search, I found out that John Wiley & Sons is worth 2.68B USD. Elsevier posted a profit of more than 900M GBP. Springer-Nature has a revenue of 1.64B EUR. We are talking big business here and scientific publishing is just a fraction of their products.
Do we even benefit from publishing in scientific journals? We pay money from our project funds (largely tax payers' money, ie. mine and yours) to publish in Open Access journals. More money needed for cover images, even more for special issues. And we benefit from putting our description of our breakthrough studies in a prestigious journal that "guarantees" that people in the field, people who truly matter, read it. True? I take it with a pinch of salt. With advanced search engines these days, we have stepped away from the days where we eagerly anticipate the next issue of the journal. We can "google" for what we want more information on.
Writing a paper and subjecting it to review and addressing the comments of the reviews take so much time. Is the time (man hours) better spent optimising the next reaction? Should we think about how can we reduce the time spent unnecessarily working on a hopeless manuscript? A couple of months ago, I mentioned about publishing a paper in which one is proud of. This means that the data presentation is not slipshod, writing is concise and the entire paper must be useful to the community as a whole. And to publish it quickly (preprint?) and invite discussion if the community is interested.
Above all, why are we doing our science if it is not for social and economic impact and benefit? More and more, I see the scientific work that results only in publications and no further follow-up as an abject failure and utter waste of the taxpayers and funding agencies' money. If a funded scientific work results only in publication, we have not only failed in the principle of funding useful science, we have also wasted many people's time. Reviewers of the grant proposals, administrators who look after the grant, students and staff who work on the project.
What if every funding agency has its own repository, with technical papers, made open to public access (or charged access as per the journals)? This would allow us to reduce the middleman and allow us to focus our time more on science and doing the really useful things.
What if we assess promotions and performance on the things that matter? Is the technology used in a commercial setting? Has the technology been licensed? Does anyone care about the technology? By not focusing on the volume of publications, we allow the scientists to look at the things that really matter. Funding agencies need to rethink their mode of assessment of funded work.
Do we totally stop publishing completely? No, we cannot. We can do one or two really good, detailed papers, published quickly but not necessarily focusing on the trendy high impact factor journals. Aim to publish 1 good paper and not 100 ordinary generated papers.
We must make the publishers work for us and not us for them. Our collective scientific efforts must be strong enough to try to solve some of the global challenges that we are facing. Not to work on increasing the volume of useless papers that no one reads.
*Views and opinions are strictly the author's own
References:
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JW.A/john-wiley-sons/net-worth
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elseviers-profits-swell-more-ps900-million?
I help grow businesses by establishing self as "trusted advisor" of clients, build lasting win-win partnerships.
6 年Hi Xian Jun, thanks for sharing your thoughts out loud. Like most other things, scientific papers are also subjected to the 80/20 rule - 20% of papers are read by 80% of the community, ie only a handful of papers are impactful. I am disturbed by the wastefulness of taxpayers' monies in many cases by publishing seemingly "useless stuff". In cases like this, I think it is important to remind oneself that in many basic sciences, their usefulness to society may not be apparent at first. Who would have thought that the imaging correction technique used in the Hubble Space telescope will improve imaging of breast cancer? With the benefit of hindsight, maybe the investment in space exploration is not wasteful after all. In terms of evaluation, many administrators and funders need to be more educated. Quantitative evaluation (such as using volume of papers, citations etc) has a part to play but only a part. There is value in studying how science/technology progresses via how the citing papers bring about something new over the references. It is possible to study via the citation patterns how basic science evolves into applications and in some cases (for example drugs), economic/social impact data is readily available. Purely counting citations is not the way to do this. There is a proper methodology behind the science of quantitative evaluation.? Most people expect scientific progress to be linear, somewhat common sensical. But I guess the reality of the matter is that it is a very complex ecosystem with funders, commercial players, academics, government, consumers all having a part.?
Head of Product Development | Entrepreneur | Private Investor | at Bubble Universe
6 年Working in industry for more than 10 years, I always appreciate to read publications that give me more insight about how I can further improved industrial R&D to produce something relevant to the society. There are gaps between industry and academics. That is a good reason to form industrial project to closer the gap. Some papers might not relevant now, but it could be for the future.
Energy Strategist / Nanoscale Pioneer / 2nd Generation Academic ??☆??Check out my new edited sequel "Carbon Nanotubes and Nanosheets for Sustainable Solutions" published by MDPI??☆??
6 年High profits for the publisher (sigh). That's the way the cookie crumbles for many mature businesses. Unhealthy saturation eventually.
PhD, PMP?, CMktr | Bringing science to life through creative design, data-driven marketing, and e-commerce solutions | Product Management ? Digital Marketing | Travel Enthusiast | INFJ
6 年That's the point. We have digressed long ago from the original intention of publishing research findings. You reminded me of Prof. Randy Schekman. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals
Professor | Educator | Innovator | R&D on Clathrate Hydrates | Clean Energy & Climate Change Specialist | Education: UBC, IITKGP, UMadras |
6 年Scientists in research institutes (including A*STAR) should read this...nice article!