The bittersweet world of science publishing. How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science. I am a scientist.
Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity. But it is disfigured by inappropriate incentives. The prevailing structures of personal reputation and career advancement mean the biggest rewards often follow the flashiest work, not the best. Those of us who follow these incentives are being entirely rational – I have followed them myself – but we do not always best serve our profession's interests, let alone those of humanity and society. We all know what distorting incentives have done to finance and banking. These luxury journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, publishing only the best research. These journals aggressively curate their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research.
It is common, and encouraged by many journals, for research to be judged by the impact factor of the journal that publishes it. Funders and universities, too, have a role to play. Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals. Randy Schekman, centre, at a Nobel prize ceremony in Stockholm.
Photograph: Rob Schoenbaum/Zuma Press/Corbis Leading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a "tyranny" that must be broken, according to a Nobel prize winner who has declared a boycott on the publications. Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year and receives his prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, said his lab would no longer send research papers to the top-tier journals, Nature, Cell and Science.
Schekman said pressure to publish in "luxury" journals encouraged researchers to cut corners and pursue trendy fields of science instead of doing more important work. The problem was exacerbated, he said, by editors who were not active scientists but professionals who favoured studies that were likely to make a splash. "I have published in the big brands, including papers that won me a Nobel prize.
ScienceGuide; Doorbreek tirannie van Nature en Science. 11 december 2013 - “Net zoals dat Wall Street zich moet losbreken van de bonuscultuur, moet de wetenschap ontworstelen aan de tirannie van ’luxe’ wetenschapstijdschriften,” zegt Nobelprijswinnaar Randy Schekman.
Hem vind je vanaf nu niet meer in Nature of Science. Randy Schekman won dit jaar de Nobelprijs voor de Fysiologie of Geneeskunde voor het ontrafelen van het transportsysteem van lichaamscellen. “Ik heb in het verleden gepubliceerde in de ‘grote merken’, ook publicaties die hebben bijgedragen aan mijn Nobelprijs. Maar dat is vanaf nu verleden tijd,” zei hij tegen The Guardian. How to break free from the stifling grip of luxury journals. Last week was the most memorable week of my scientific career.
Accompanied by family, friends and colleagues, I was honoured with the award of a Nobel Prize in an unforgettable ceremony and banquet. That same week, I also chose to express highly critical views about deficiencies I perceive in the system scientists use for publishing and rewarding scientific research, for which I was both attacked and praised. My remarks focused on the power of certain journals, which I refer to as luxury journals, that have distorted how science and scientists operate.
I was not surprised by the range of opinions my comments provoked, but I have been impressed by their quantity. The evidence that the scientific community wants and needs this discussion could not be stronger. Boycotting academic publishers is a career risk for young scientists. In December 2013, professor Randy Schekman collected his Nobel prize for physiology and medicine.
He also announced his decision to boycott three of the most prestigious scientific journals: Nature, Science and Cell. He accused these "luxury journals" of exerting a kind of "tyranny" over scientific research and invites others to follow his lead. Schekman suggests that luxury journals' decisions to publish work, or not, are made according to how fashionable it is, rather than its scientific merit. He argues convincingly that such is the influence of these journals, they actually direct the type of scientific research undertaken. By pursuing their own agenda to publish work that will be cited, these journals encourage the disproportionate investment of resources in fashionable fields.
Schekman is not the first to argue these points, but he is the most prominent to state them so publicly, doing so just one week before collecting his Nobel Prize. The status quo is reinforced. Why we are not ready for radical changes in science publishing. Having had the honor of attending back-to-back lectures by Nobel awardees Dr James Rothman and Dr Randy Schekman at the recent American Society for Cell Biology meeting in New Orleans, it was Dr Rothman's comments that struck the right chord – he specifically pointed out that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) needs to allocate more money for basic research.
Dr Rothman's talk followed a lecture by Dr Jeremy Berg, former director of the NIH's Institute for General Medical Science (NIGMS; the institute that promotes and funds basic research). In his lecture, Dr Berg noted that NIGMS receives only ~8% of the total NIH budget, yet about 60% of Nobel prizewinners are funded through this institute. Very telling, in my humble opinion. Dr Schekman also delivered an outstanding lecture, and he has recently made a case for changing the way in which science is published, here in the Guardian. And of course, some papers can also be highly cited, yet in a negative way. Are academia and publishing destroying scientific innovation? By Judith Curry It is alarming that so many Nobel Prize recipients have lamented that they would never have survived this current academic environment.
What are the implications of this on the discovery of future scientific paradigm shifts and scientific inquiry in general? King’s Review has an article Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A Conversation with Sydney Brenner. Sydney Brenner, a professor of Genetic medicine at the University of Cambridge and Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. The post includes a fascinating discussion on sequencing DNA. Journal editors are not allowed to blog.