Open Access publishing: present and future
This session is moderated by Bill Hooker and Bjoern Brembs:
The world of scientific publishing is undergoing rapid change. Where is it now? Where is it going? What will happen to Impact Factors? Will there still be journals 20 years from now? How will a scientific paper look like? Who will be the ‘peers’ in peer review?
What are the reasons for having ~24,000 journals? What are the reasons for having two journals? What would be the problems for a single publication database? What are the problems associated with the current system of 24,000 journals? Compare and contrast.
Where should the hurdle for vetting scientific results be placed? Should we publish first and ask questions later? Should scientific publishing be a privilege which only gets granted relatively rarely?
Recommended reading WRT Thomson IF:
1. There are at least two examples that the IF is basically a negotiated rather than an actual value: a) PLoS Medicine IF could have been anywhere from 2 to 11, depending on negotiations with Thomson. b) In 2001, Current Biology was acquired by Cell Press and its subsequent IF went up from 7 to 11. This was due not to an increase in citations, but by manipulating the denominator of the IF equation such that the number of published articles was reduced from 528 to 300 for the same year 2001. The link is to a screenshot from WoS from last week.
2. Even if it were a non-negotiable value, the IF cannot be successfully reproduced from the original data.
3. Even if the IF were non-negotiable and could be successfully reproduced, the IF is not mathematically sound.
All of this has been debated for it seems like forever.
Ideas: How about a repository for “unfinished projects”? How about a researcher RSS which can aggregate all scientific contributions?
Discuss:
You may both be aware of a little experiment I am running right now with the ChemSpider Journal of Chemistry? Immediately after announcing the journal potential authors asked what the IF is. IF hunger is an interesting phenomenon…especially for a journal that is yet to post an article! Times are changing….there will be a replacement IF based on web-based measures. What will they be? Time will tell. I will attend this session since now I am a Publisher I am very interested! Posted By: ChemSpiderman
From Bill:
In the spirit of an unconference about science online, I thought I’d simply ask the audience: what do you want to know about Open Access?
There are two things I must clarify. Firstly, by audience I mean both online and on the day: if you’re there, you can ask in person, but if you’re not going to the meatspace conference you are welcome to ask your question here, on my blog or by email to me, at any time. Secondly, I’m not claiming I’ll have the answer ready to hand — but OA and related Open ideas are pretty much an obession with me my hobby these days, and if you have a question I can’t answer I’ll be sure to find out and get back to you. (In addition, the conference will be packed with OA experts and I have no hesitation in bothering them for answers!)
So: what do you want to know about Open Access?
