On academic publishing: open access, exaptation, and a new hope
A few days ago, a deal was made between Max Planck Digital Library and SpringerNature. From now on, any researcher working at the Max Planck Society will be able to publish their papers in the prestigious Nature-branded journals in open access. Sounds like good news? Well, here’s a caveat: for each such paper Max Planck Society will pay €9,500. To me, this sounds like a tiny bit too much, but I will not rant about the horrors of academic publishing in this essay. There’s a plenty of good criticisms on the Internet, mine wouldn’t bring anything new to the table. What I can bring, however, is an idea, or a guess, of how things may change in the future — and where the new hope for a better publication system could come from. This guess may be trivial — but it was new to me, and so it could be new to someone else.
But first, a very short rant (I cannot hold myself, after all 😄). This deal with Nature reveals that the old hope — the hope that the open-access journals owned by big publishers could be beneficial for the academia— was an illusion. Over the past several years we were observing how a broken system of academic publishing, the pay-to-access system, ruled by several giants — Springer, Elsevier, & Co. — was being replaced by a new, equally broken system: the pay-to-publish system. Of course, ruled by the same giants. And I won’t be surprised if it turns out that the new system is even more profitable for them than the old one. Each big publisher has now launched an “open access” journal: Royal Society Open Science, Nature Communications, Science Advances… Each comes with a hefty “article processing charge” — around €2,000–4,000 per article. Obviously, all these open access journals are “open” only to the readers, but not to the majority of researchers, whose institutions cannot afford such sums. All in all, I don’t see how the “open-access” journals of this sort are better than the old-school paywalled publications. If anything, they are worse: at least, the paywall can be removed with the magic wand of Sci-Hub, while there is no magic wand for pay-to-publish journals.
That was my rant. Now, is there a new hope? Is there a beam of light in the darkness? Are there any forces of the Rebellion left, able to defeat the Empire? In other words, can academics ever obtain what they deserve: a rational system of publishing? A rational, not an insane one. And where can it come from?
To see where a systematic change in academic publishing could appear, let’s consider how systems change, in general. Say, technological systems. Modern technology is a convenient example, because it transitioned multiple times in front of our eyes, and the memories are still vivid. Some of these transitions are still in the making, with a clear winning side:
- transition from dumb-phones to smartphones;
- transition from cinema to streaming TV;
- transition from petrol/diesel cars to electric vehicles;
- transition from traditional hotels to Airbnb, etc.
Each of these shifts represents a change of the system as a whole. Every outdated system on this list has two things in common with legacy academic publishers: being ineffective and/or overpriced. Cinema: the price of a single ticket is often the same as a monthly subscription to 4K movies on Netflix. Hotels: the price for a room is often several times higher than that of a comparable, or even better, Airbnb apartment. Petrol/diesel cars: maybe not overpriced, but certainly worse than EVs in most aspects. Also, looking backwards, we can realise how terribly overpriced the dumb-phones were.
Now, how exactly were (or are) these systems transformed? None of the legacy manufacturers had suddenly decided: “You know what, we shall reform ourselves! Let’s make our products better and more affordable!” In fact, this might go against their own interests. In all these examples, the positive change arrived from the outside: from a completely different, unpredictable place (which, of course, may seem predictable in the hindsight). Smartphones were introduced by a computer company. Automotive industry is being transformed by a battery company. Cinema received a deadly stab from a DVD rental store (yes, that’s what Netflix used to be). And so on. In evolution theory, there is a good term for such unexpected transformations — exaptation: it’s when a dinosaur suddenly realises that its insulation can be used for flying; or when a DVD rental suddenly realises that it can produce TV series on its own.
Interestingly, it looks like the old systems resist the transformation not because they are evil, but because they are genuinely unable to see a tsunami coming. Nokia’s CEO was famously ridiculing iPhones (watch the video on the left — it’s fun). Traditional car manufacturers have long underplayed the value of EVs. Steven Spielberg seems to genuinely believe that Netflix isn’t “real cinema experience”… Big players are often too big to notice the need to change, and too big to change.
The logical next question: do we have similar underdogs that can replace the whole system and become new key players: new Springers and Elseviers (but hopefully less evil, at least at first)? Replace them — not change or improve. Replace. I think such underdogs — candidates for an exaptation — do exist. In fact, they are sawing the legs of the Colossus already. These are preprint servers. BioRxiv, OSF, medRxiv, and others grow exponentially. Look at the figure below, which shows monthly publications on a single preprint server, BioRxiv. If this doesn’t look like a tsunami, I don’t know what does.
A tsunami, yes. But not necessarily a replacement for the old system. There still is a chance that preprints will remain just that — preprints — unless a key component is added. A flip, that could momentarily transform all the “arxivs” and “Rxivs” into prestigious publishing platforms. This can happen virtually overnight: the barrels with gunpowder are already lying under the Parliament. Someone just needs to bring a torch.
Or a flamethrower.
So, what is this missing piece of a puzzle, the spark that will start an explosion? I think, it’s a clever, effective method for assessing the quality of preprints. Such a method would convert preprint servers into self-sufficient publication platforms. Without it, preprints will remain no more than a footstep for “proper” journals — a convenient footstep, a useful one. But just a footstep. Quality assessment is necessary. We’ve seen what happens without it: during the initial months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the preprint servers were flooded by low-quality research. And this quality assessment cannot be done via traditional peer-review, by peer academics, in their free time, for no payment. Nobody would accept a “new” solution like this. What’s the alternative?
There are multiple alternatives, of course. Here’s my hunch at a solution (I’m sure it was already expressed by someone, but I don’t hear colleagues discussing it, so I’ll express it myself): using professional reviewers, not hobby reviewers. This may sound… unusual, at first, but such approach has worked successfully in another domain: evaluation of patents. Patent offices hire patent examiners. Patent examiners get paid to examine new inventions. It’s their job. And not a bad job. Remember, Albert Einstein used to be a patent examiner.
Contemporary scientists aren’t professional reviewers. This explains why many of us are bad at it. Let’s face it: some reviews are rude, written without much effort, and often containing massive misreadings of the papers. And this is understandable: it’s hard to be good at something you do occasionally, against your will, and with no reward.
There’s a counter-argument to having professional “paper examiners”: this would require too many people and too much money. I don’t think so. As I’ve said, the so-called “open-access” journals charge €2,000–4,000 per paper (and up to €9,500, as we’ve just witnessed). Crazy! What is the real cost of “processing” — to use this bureaucratic term— an article? The counting has been done: around €400 per paper, including proofreading, typesetting, registering DOI, etc. 5–20 times less than what traditional “open access” publishers are asking for. Now, if a “paper examiner” reviews 20 papers per month, and if 10 of them eventually get accepted, and if we charge about €700 per accepted article… You can do the math yourself, but there is a decent salary here, plus more.
On a closer look, this approach to reviewing solves at least two problems. First, by incorporating a filter of paper quality, preprints become actual papers: that is, final products, not just intermediary steps towards a final product. And so, preprint platforms become independent of the legacy publishers. Springer and Elsevier can be dethroned as quickly as Apple dethroned Nokia. Second, preprint platforms obtain a source of income — and potentially, a decent one. This is important because you cannot beat a hyper-effective conglomerate of money-making machines if you are penniless. Additionally, there are several bonuses: researchers no longer have to be distracted from research by the occasional forced labour, while many early-career scholars get an opportunity for a well-paid job: a paper examiner. At present, we have more people with PhD diplomas than open university positions, so creating a new niche in the academia doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
Now, is this the only possible solution? Of course not. But it’s a solution that, from my viewpoint, could transform preprint servers into prestigious players on the market of academic publishing. And at least for some time, the whole situation with academic publishing could be more rational and equalitarian than it is today.
