Björn Brembs

Wikipedia defines
'[embezzlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embezzlement)' as "the act
of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets".
Google defines it as "misappropriation of funds placed in one's trust":

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large">
<img
src="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image-1024x243.png"
class="wp-image-2484" decoding="async"
srcset="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image-1024x243.png 1024w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image-300x71.png 300w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image-768x182.png 768w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image-50x12.png 50w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image.png 1327w"
sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" width="1024" height="243" />
</figure>

If one takes the position that researchers at public institutions are
entrusted with public funds to spend on research in the public interest,
then researchers spending public funds on something that mainly benefits
them *personally* rather than the public, may be considered in dangerous
territory. The point here cannot be to make a legal case. This exercise
is more of an attempt to analyze if current or future researcher
publication practice can be ethically condoned, broadly speaking.

So let's look at the current publication practice of researchers. Due to
the traditional reward structure, researchers aim to publish in the most
prestigious journals, in order to benefit from that prestige in [tenure,
hiring and promotion
decisions](https://doi.org/10.12688%2Ff1000research.16493.1). In
subscription times, in which we still partially live, this practice does
not come with immediate changes in the cost/pricing structure. However,
this picture changes dramatically when Open Access publications are
considered, where the journals demand payment of an article processing
charge (APC). It has been documented exhaustively over several studies
that these [APCs
scale](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-020-03540-3)
[with journal](https://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/andrew/)
[prestige](https://ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/42327/1/Open_access_journals_and_article_processing_charges_2011_2021_preprint.pdf).
This situations provides incentives for authors to choose the most
expensive publication option and there are two studies that have found
such effects already:

> authors choose to publish in more expensive journals

Published [this year](https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24717) and [from
2019](https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10280):

> higher APCs were actually associated with increased article volumes

One argument used in favor of publications in prestigious journals is
article 'quality': research in prestigious journals is often considered
of higher quality. However, that notion is not supported by the evidence
which suggests that [prestigious journals struggle to reach even average
reliability](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00037/full).
This leaves current author practice mainly benefiting the personal
careers of researchers at the expense of the public purse.

Taken together, in a future world where every published article is
financed by APCs, all else remaining equal, there will be strong
incentives for authors to spend more public funds in order to benefit
their own careers. Inasmuch as the excess public funds spent on
prestigious journals support the spread and attention to unreliable
science, this additional damage caused by this practice likely exceeds
the pecuniary damage.

Legal scholars will have to weigh in on whether spending public funds
exclusively for career purposes in the way described would actually
constitute embezzlement in the legal sense. However, even if that bar is
not met, incentives to maximize the expenditure of public funds are
never advisable. There are already too many such incentives in research
(e.g., overhead, grant funds in hiring, tenure, promotion, etc.). It
does not seem wise to add yet another. Eventually, the scholarly
community is accountable to the public. Accumulating incentives for
wasting the public funds the scholarly community has been entrusted
with, does not seem like an advisable strategy.

Wikipedia defines ‘embezzlement’ as “the act of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets”. Google defines it as “misappropriation of funds placed in one’s trust”: If one takes the position that researchers at public institutions are entrusted with public funds to spend on research in the public interest, then researchers spending public funds on something that mainly benefits them

 personally

rather than the

Open Access and the incentives for embezzlement

This post wasn’t on the original slate for the Political Economics of Publishing series but it seems apposite as the arguments and consequences of the Editorial Board of Lingua resigning en masse to form a new journal published by Ubiquity Press continue to rumble on. The resignation of the editorial board of Lingua from the (Elsevier owned) journal to form a new journal, that is intended to really be “the same journal” raises interesting issues

Cameron Neylon

::: {#attachment_19078 .wp-caption .alignleft style="width: 310px"}
[![Victory Press of Type used by SFPP (Photo credit:
Wikipedia)](http://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/350px-victory_press-300x241.jpg){.size-medium
.wp-image-19078 aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19078"
decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="300" height="241"
srcset="https://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/350px-victory_press-300x241.jpg 300w, https://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/350px-victory_press.jpg 350w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}](http://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/350px-victory_press.jpg)

Victory Press of Type used by SFPP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
:::

*This post wasn't on the original slate for the [Political Economics of
Publishing
series](http://cameronneylon.net/blog/the-political-economics-of-open-access-publishing-a-series/)
but it seems apposite as the arguments and consequences of the Editorial
Board of Lingua resigning en masse to form a new journal published by
Ubiquity Press continue to rumble on.*

The resignation of the editorial board of Lingua from the (Elsevier
owned) journal to form a new journal, that is intended to really be "the
same journal" raises interesting issues of ownership and messaging.
Perhaps even more deeply it raises questions of what the real assets of
a journal are. The mutual incomprehension on both sides really arises
from very different views of what a journal *is* and therefore of what
the assets are, who controls them, and who owns them. The views of the
publisher and the editorial board are so incommensurate as to be almost
comical. The views, and more importantly the actions, of the group that
really matters, the community that underlies the journal, remains to be
seen. I will argue that it is that community that is the most important
asset of the strange composite object that is "the journal" and that it
is control of that asset that determines how these kinds of process (for
as many have noted this is hardly the first time this has happened) play
out.

The publisher view is a fairly simple one and clearly expressed by Tom
Reller in [a piece on Elsevier
Connect](https://www.elsevier.com/connect/addressing-the-resignation-of-the-lingua-editorial-board).
Elsevier no doubt holds paperwork stating that they own the trademark of
the journal name and masthead and other subsidiary rights to represent
the journal as continuing the work of the journal first founded in 1949.
That journal was published by North Holland, an entity purchased by
Elsevier in the 90s. The work of North Holland *in building up the name*
was part of the package purchased by Elsevier, and you can see this
clearly in Reller's language in his update to the post where he says
Elsevier sees the work of North Holland as the work of Elsevier. The
commercial investment and continuity is precisely what Elsevier
purchased and this investment is represented in the holding of the
trademarks and trading rights. The investment, first of North Holland,
and then Elsevier in building up the value of these holdings was for the
purpose of gaining future returns. Whether the returns are from
subscription payments or APCs no longer matters very much, what matters
is realising them and retaining control of the assets.

As a side note the ownership of these journals founded in the first half
of the twentieth century is often much less clear than these claims
would suggest. Often the work of an original publisher would have been
seen as a collaboration, contracts may not exist and registering of
trademarks and copyright may have come much later. I know nothing about
the specifics of Lingua but it is not uncommon for later instantiations
of an editorial board to have signed over trademarks to the publisher in
a way that is legally dubious. The reality of course is that legal
action to demonstrate this would be expensive, impractical and pretty
risky. A theoretical claim of legal fragility is not much use against
the practical fact that big publishers can hire expensive lawyers. The
publisher view is that they own those core assets and have invested in
them to gain future returns.Â  They will therefore act to protect those
assets.

The view of the editorial board is almost diametrically opposed. They
see themselves as representing a community of governance and creating
and providing the intellectual prestige of the journal. For the
editorial board that community prestige is the core asset. With the
political shifts of Open Access and digital scholarship questions of
governance have started to play into those issues of prestige.
Communities and journals that want to position themselves as forward
looking, or supporting their community, are becoming increasingly
concerned with access and costs. This is painted as a question of
principle, but the core underlying concern is the way that political
damage caused by lack of access, or by high (perceived) prices will
erode the asset value of the prestige that the editorial board has built
up through their labour.

This comes to a head where the editorial board asks Elsevier to hand
over the rights to the journal name. For Elsevier this is a demand to
simply hand over an asset, the parcel of intellectual property rights.
David Mainwaring's
[description](https://twitter.com/d_mainwaring/status/662248215534837760)
of the [demands of the
board](http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/files/2015/11/Letter-renegotiation-Lingua-OA.pdf)
as ["a gun to the
head"](https://twitter.com/d_mainwaring/status/662248215534837760) gives
a sense of how many people in publishing would view that letter. From
that perspective it is clearly unreasonable, even deliberately so,
intended to create conflict with no expectation of resolution. This is a
group demanding, with menaces, the handover of an asset which the
publisher has invested in over the years. The paper holdings of
trademarks and trading rights represent the core asset and the
opportunities for future returns. A unilateral demand to hand them over
is only one step from high way robbery. Look closely at the language
Reller uses to see how the link between investment and journal name, and
therefore those paper holdings is made.

For the editorial board the situation is entirely different. I would
guess many researchers would look at that letter and see nothing
unreasonable in it at all. The core asset is the prestige and they see
Elsevier as degrading that asset, and therefore the value of their
contribution over time. For them, this is the end of a long road in
which they've tried to ensure that *their investment* is realised
through the development of prestige and stature, for them and for the
journal. The message they receive from Elsevier is that it *doesn't
value the core asset of the journal* and that *it doesn't value their
investment*. To address this they attempt to gain more control, to
assert community governance over issues that they hadn't previously
engaged with. These attempts to engage over new issues â€" price and
access â€" are often seen as naive, or at best fail to connect with the
publisher perspective. The approaches are then rebuffed and the
editorial group feel they have only a single card left to play, and the
[tension therefore rises in the language that they
use](http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/files/2015/11/Letter-renegotiation-Lingua-OA.pdf).
What the publisher sees as a gun to the head, the editorial board see as
their last opportunity to engage on the terms that they see as
appropriate.

Of course, this kind of comprehension gap is common to collective action
problems that reach across stakeholder groups, and as in most cases that
lack of comprehension leads to recrimination and dissmissal of the other
parties perspective as on one hand motivated by self-interest on one
hand and on the other by naivety and arrogance. There is some justice in
these characterisations but regardless of which side of the political
fence you may sit it is useful to understand that these incompatible
views are driven by differing narratives of value, by an entirely
different view as to what the core assets are. On both sides the view is
that the other party is dangerously and wilfully degrading the value of
the journal.

Both views; that the value of the journal is the prestige and influence
realised out of expert editorial work, and that the value is the brand
of the masthead and the future income it represents, are limited. They
fail to engage with the root of value creation in the authorship of the
content. The real core asset is the community of authors. Of course both
groups realise this. The editorial board believes that they can carry
the community of authors with them. Elsevier believes that the masthead
will keep that community loyal. The success or failure of the move
depends on which of them is right. That answer is that probably both are
to some extent which means the community gets split, the asset degraded
in a real-life example of the double-defection strategy in a Prisoner's
Dillemma game.

Such editorial board resignations are not new. There have been a number
in the past, some more successful than others. It is important to note
that the editorial board *is not* the community, or representative of
them. It is precisely those cases where the editorial board is most
directly representing the community of authors where defections are most
successful. On the past evidence Elsevier are probably correct to gamble
that the journal will at least survive. The factors in favour of the
editorial board are that Linguistics is a relatively small, tight knit
community, that they have a credible (and APC free) offer on the table
that will look and feel a lot like the service offering that they had. I
would guess that Lingua authors are focussed on the journal title and
only think of the publisher as a distant second issue, if they are even
aware of who the publisher is. In that sense the emergence of new lean
publishers like Ubiquity Press and consortial sustainability schemes
like Open Library of Humanities are a game changer, offering a high
quality experience that otherwise looks and feels like a traditional
journal process (again, it is crucial to emphasise that lack of APCs to
trouble the humanities scholar) while also satisfying the social, funder
and institutional pressure for Open Access.

Obviously my sympathies lie with the editorial board. I think they have
probably the best chance to make this work we have yet seen. The key is
to bring the author community with them. The size and interconnections
of this specific community make this possible.

But perhaps more interesting is to look at it from the Elsevier
perspective. The internal assessment will be that there were no options
here. They've weathered similar defections in the past, usually with
success and there would be no value in acceding to the demands of the
editorial board. The choice was to hold a (possibly somewhat degraded)
asset or to give it away. The internal perception will be that the new
journal can't possibly survive, probably that Ubiquity Press will be
naively under funded and can't possibly offer the level of service that
the community will expect. Best case scenario is steady as she goes,
with a side order of *schadenfreude* as the new journal fails; worst
case, the loss of value to a single masthead. And on the overall profit
and loss sheet a single journal doesn't really matter as its the
aggregate value that sells subscription bundles. Logical analysis points
to defection as the best move in the prisoner's dilemma.

Except I think that's wrong, for two reasons. One is that this is not a
single trial prisoners dillemma, its a repeated trial with changing
conditions. Second, the asset analysis plays out differently for
Elsevier than it does for the editorial board making the repeated trials
more important. The asset for the editorial board is the community *of
the journal*. The asset for Elsevier is the author community of *all
their journals*. Thus for the editorial board they are betting
everything on one play â€" they are all in, hence the strength of the
rhetoric being deployed. Elsevier need to consider how their choices may
play into future conditions.

Again, the standard analyis would be "protect the assets". Send a strong
message to the wider community (including shareholders), that the
company will hold its assets. The problem for me is that this is both
timid, and in the longer term potentially toxic. It's timid, compared to
what should surely be a robust internal view of the value that Elsevier
offers. That the quality services they provided simply cannot be offered
sustainably at a lower price. The confident response would be to call
the board's bluff, put the full costing and offer transparently on the
table in front of the community and force them to do a compare and
contrast. More than just saying "it can't be done at the price you
demand" put out the real costs and the real services.

The more daring move would be to let the editorial board take the name
on a "borrow and return" basis, giving Elsevier first right of refusal
if (and in the Elsevier view, when) they find that they're not getting
what they need in their new low cost (and therefore, in the Elsevier
view, low service) environment. After all, the editorial board [already
have money to support
APCs](http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/files/2015/11/Letter-renegotiation-Lingua-OA.pdf)
according to their letter. It's risky of course, but again it would
signal strong confidence in the value of the services offered.
Publishers rarely have to do this, but I find it depressing that they
almost always shy away from opportunities to really place their value
offering in a true market in front of their author communities. To my
mind it shows a lack of robust internal confidence in the value they
offer.

But beyond the choice of actions there's a reason why this standard
approach is potentially toxic, and potentially more toxic long term even
if, perhaps especially if, Elsevier can continue to run the journal with
a new board. If Elsevier are to protext the existing asset as they see
it, they need to make the case that the journal can continue to run as
normal with a new board. The problem is that this case can only be made
if the labour of editors is interchangeable, devaluing the contribution
of the existing board and by extension *the contribution of all other
Elsevier editorial boards*. If Elsevier can always replace the board of
a journal then why would an individual editor, one who believes that it
is their special and specific contribution that is building journal
prestige, stay engaged? And if its merely to get the line on their CV
and they really don't care, how can Elsevier rely on the quality of
their work? Note it is not that Elsevier don't see the value of that
contributed labour, it is clear that editors are part of the value
creation chain that adds to Elsevier income, but that the situation
forces them to claim that this labour is interchangeable. Elsevier see
the masthead as the asset that attracts that labout. The editorial board
see their labour and prestige as the asset that attracts the publisher
investment in the masthead.

You can see this challenge in Elsevier statements. David Clark,
interviewed as part of [a Chronicle
piece](http://chronicle.com/article/What-a-Mass-Exodus-at-a/234066) is
quoted as follows:

> He sees the staff departures as a routine part of the publishing
> world. "Journals change and editors change," Mr. Clark said. "That
> happens normally."

And Tom Reller in the [statement on the Elsevier
website](https://www.elsevier.com/connect/addressing-the-resignation-of-the-lingua-editorial-board):

> The editors of *Lingua* wanted for Elsevier to transfer ownership of
> the journal to the collective of editors at no cost. Elsevier cannot
> agree to this as we have invested considerable amount of time, money
> and other resources into making it a respected journal in its field.
> We founded *Lingua* 66 years ago.

You can see here the attempt to discount the specific value of the
current editorial board, but in terms that are intended to come across
as conciliatory. Elsevier's comms team are clearly aware of the risk
here. Too weak a stance would look weak (and might play badly with
institutional share holders) and too strong a stance sends a message to
the community that their contribution is not really valued.

This is the toxic heart of the issue. In the end if Elsevier win, then
what they've shown is that the contribution of the current editorial
board doesn't matter, that the community *only* cares about the brand.
That's a fine short term win and may even strengthen their hand in
subscription negotiations. But it's utterly toxic to the core message
that publishers want to send to the research communities that they
serve, that they are merely the platform. It completely undermines the
value creation by editorial boards that Elsevier relies on to sell
journals (or APCs) and generate their return on investment.

Playing both sides worked in the world before the web, when researchers
were increasingly divorced from any connection with the libraries
negotiating access to content. Today, context collapse is confronting
both groups. Editorial boards suddenly becoming aware that they had
acquiesced in giving up control, and frequently legal ownership of
"their" journal, at the same time as issues of pricing and cost are
finally coming to their attention. Publishers in general, and Elsevier
in particular, can't win a trick in the public arena because their
messaging to researchers, lobbying of government, and actions in
negotiation are now visible to all the players. But more than that, all
those players are starting to pay attention.

The core issue for Elsevier is that if they win this battle, they will
show that it is their conception of the core assets of the journal that
is dominant. But if that's true then it means that editorial boards
contribute little or no value. That doesn't mean that a "brand only"
strategy couldn't be pursued, and we will return to the persistence of
prestige and brand value in the face of increasing evidence that they
don't reflect underlying value later in the series. But that's a medium
term strategy. In the longer term, if Elsevier and other publishers
continue to seek to focus on and hold the masthead and trademarks as the
core asset of the journal that they are forced into a messaging and
communications stance that will be ultimately disasterous.

There's no question that Elsevier understands the value that editorial
board contributions bring. But continuing down the ownership path
through continued rebellions will end up forcing them to keep signalling
to senior members of research communities that their personal
contribution has no value, that they can easily be replaced with someone
else. In the long term that is not going to play out well.


Victory Press of Type used by SFPP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 This post wasn’t on the original slate for the Political Economics of Publishing series but it seems apposite as the arguments and consequences of the Editorial Board of Lingua resigning en masse to form a new journal published by Ubiquity Press continue to rumble on.

The resignation of the editorial board of Lingua from the (Elsevier owned) journal to form a new journal,

PolEcon of OA Publishing: What are the assets of a journal?

Stephen Royle

When it comes to measuring the impact of our science, citations are pretty much all we have. And not only that but they only say one thing &#8211; yeah &#8211; with no context. How can we enrich citation data?
Much has been written about how and why and whether or not we should use metrics for research assessment. If we accept that metrics are here to stay in research assessment (of journals, Universities, departments and of individuals), I think we should be figuring out better ways to look at the available information.
<a href="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="166" data-permalink="https://quantixed.org/8541947962_6853dd9786_z/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?fit=640%2C427&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="640,427" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="8541947962_6853dd9786_z" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?fit=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?fit=640%2C427&amp;ssl=1" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-166" src="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?resize=300%2C200&#038;ssl=1" alt="8541947962_6853dd9786_z" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?w=640&amp;ssl=1 640w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a>Citations to published articles are the key metric under discussion. This is because they are linked to research outputs (papers), have some relation to &#8220;impact&#8221; and they can be easily computed and a number of metrics have been developed to draw out information from the data (H-index, IF etc.). However there are many known problems with citations such as: <a href="http://biomickwatson.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/citations-are-not-a-measure-of-quality/">they are heavily influenced by the size of the field</a>. What I want to highlight here is what a data-poor resource they are and think of ways we could enrich the dataset with minimal modification to our existing databases.
1. We need a way to distinguish a yeah from a no
The biggest weakness of using citations as a measure of research impact is that a citation is a citation. It just says +1. We have no idea if +1 means &#8220;the paper stinks&#8221; or &#8220;the work is amazing!&#8221;.  It&#8217;s incredible that we can rate shoelaces on Amazon or eBay but we haven&#8217;t figured out a way to do this for scientific papers. Here&#8217;s a suggestion:
<ul>
<li>A neutral citation is +1</li>
<li>A positive citation is +2</li>
<li>A negative citation is -1</li>
</ul>
A neutral citation would be stating a fact and adding reference to support it, e.g. DNA is a double helix (Watson &amp; Crick, 1953).
A positive citation would be something like: in agreement with Bloggs et al. (2010), we also find x.
A negative citation might be: we have tested the model proposed by Smith &amp; Jones (1977) and find that it does not hold.
One further idea (described <a href="http://www.cogsci.nl/blog/miscellaneous/220--sharing-science-searchability-accessibility-and-the-future-of-academic-publishing">here</a>) is to add more context to citation using keywords. Such as &#8220;replicating&#8221;, &#8220;using&#8221;, &#8220;consistent with&#8221;. This would also help with searching the scientific literature.
2. Multiple citations in one article
Because currently, citations are a +1, there is no way to distinguish whether the paper giving the citation was mentioning the cited paper in passing or was entirely focussed on that one paper.
Another way to think about this is that there are multiple reasons to cite a paper: maybe the method or reagent is being used, maybe they are talking about Figure 2 showing X or Figure 5 showing Y. What if a paper is talking about all of these things? In other words, the paper was very useful. Shouldn&#8217;t we record that interest?
Suggestion: A simple way to do this is to count the number of mentions in the text of the paper rather than just if the paper appears in the reference list.
3. Division of a citation unit for fair credit to each author
Calculations such as the H-index make no allowance for the position of the author in the author list (used in biological sciences and some other fields to denote contribution to the paper). It doesn&#8217;t make sense that the 25th author on a 50 author paper receives 100% of the citation credit as the first or last author. Similarly, the first author on a two author paper is only credited in the same way as the middle author on a multi-author paper. The difference in contribution is clear, but the citation credit is not. This is because the citation credit for the former paper is worth 25 times that of the latter! This needs to be equalised. The citation unit, c could be divided to achieve fair credit for authors. At the moment, c=1, but could be multiples (or negative values) as described above. Here&#8217;s a suggestion:
<ul>
<li>First (and multiple first) and last (and co-last) authors get 0.5c divided by number of authors.</li>
<li>The remainder, 0.5c, is divided between all authors.</li>
</ul>
For a two author paper: first author gets 0.5c and last author gets 0.5c. (0.5c/2+0.5c/2)=0.5c
For a ten author paper with one first author and one last author, first and last author each get (0.5c/2+0.5c/10)=0.3c and the 5th author gets (0c+0.5c/10)=0.05c.
Note that the sum for all authors will equal c. So this is equalised for all papers. These citation credits would then be the basis for H-index and other calculations for individuals.
Most simply, the denominator would be the number of authors, or &#8211; if we can figure out a numerical credit system &#8211; each author could be weighted according to their contribution.
4. Citations to reviews should be downgraded
A citation to a review is not equal to a citation to a research paper. For several reasons. First, they are cited at a higher rate, because they are a handy catchall citation particularly for the Introduction section in papers. This isn&#8217;t fair either and robs credit from the people who did the work that actually demonstrated what is being discussed. Second, the achievement of publishing a review is nothing in comparison to publishing a paper. Publishing a review involves 1) being asked, 2) writing it, 3) light peer review and some editing and that&#8217;s it! Publishing a research paper involves much more effort: having the idea, getting the money, hiring the people, training the people, getting a result &#8211; and we are only at the first panel in Fig 1A. Not to mention the people-hours and arduous peer review process. It&#8217;s not fair that citations to reviews are treated as equal to papers when it comes to research assessment.
Suggestion: a citation to a review should be worth a fraction (maybe 1/10th) of a citation to a research paper.
In addition, there are too many reviews written at the moment. I think this is not because they are particularly useful. Very few actually contribute a new view or new synthesis of an area, most are just a summary of the area. Journals like them because they drive up their citation metrics. Authors like them because it is nice to be invited to write something &#8211; it means people are interested in what you have to say&#8230; If citations to reviews were downgraded, there would be less incentive to publish them and we would have more space for all those real papers that are getting rejected at journals that claim that space is a limitation for publication.
5. Self-citations should be eliminated
If we are going to do all of the above, then self-citation would pretty soon become a problem. Excessive self-citation would be difficult to police, and not many scientists would go for a -1 citation to their own work. So, the simplest thing to do is to eliminate self-citation. Author identification is crucial here. At the moment this doesn&#8217;t work well. In ISI and Scopus, whatever algorithm they use keeps missing some papers of mine (and my name is not very common at all). I know people who have been grouped with other people that they have published one or two papers with. For authors with ambiguous names, this is a real problem. ORCID is a good solution and maybe having an ORCID (or similar) should be a requirement for publication in the future.
Suggestion: the company or body that collates citation information needs to accurately assign authors and make sure that research papers are properly segregated from reviews and other publication types.
These were five things I thought of to enrich citation data to improve research assessment, do you have any other ideas?
&#8212;
The post title is taken from &#8216;&#8221;Yeah&#8221; Is What We Had&#8217; by Grandaddy from their album Sumday.

When it comes to measuring the impact of our science, citations are
pretty much all we have. And not only that but they only say one thing
-- yeah -- with no context. How can we enrich citation data?

Much has been written about how and why and whether or not we should use
metrics for research assessment. If we accept that metrics are here to
stay in research assessment (of journals, Universities, departments and
of individuals), I think we should be figuring out better ways to look
at the available information.

[![8541947962_6853dd9786_z](https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1){.alignleft
.size-medium .wp-image-166 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
attachment-id="166"
permalink="https://quantixed.org/8541947962_6853dd9786_z/"
orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1"
orig-size="640,427" comments-opened="1"
image-meta="{\"aperture\":\"0\",\"credit\":\"\",\"camera\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"created_timestamp\":\"0\",\"copyright\":\"\",\"focal_length\":\"0\",\"iso\":\"0\",\"shutter_speed\":\"0\",\"title\":\"\",\"orientation\":\"0\"}"
image-title="8541947962_6853dd9786_z" image-description=""
image-caption=""
medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1"
large-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1"
width="300" height="200"
srcset="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?w=640&ssl=1 640w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"
recalc-dims="1"}](https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8541947962_6853dd9786_z.jpg?ssl=1)Citations
to published articles are the key metric under discussion. This is
because they are linked to research outputs (papers), have some relation
to "impact" and they can be easily computed and a number of metrics have
been developed to draw out information from the data (H-index, IF etc.).
However there are many known problems with citations such as: [they are
heavily influenced by the size of the
field](http://biomickwatson.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/citations-are-not-a-measure-of-quality/).
What I want to highlight here is what a data-poor resource they are and
think of ways we could enrich the dataset with minimal modification to
our existing databases.

**1. We need a way to distinguish a yeah from a no**

The biggest weakness of using citations as a measure of research impact
is that a citation is a citation. It just says +1. We have no idea if
+1 means "the paper stinks" or "the work is amazing!".  It's incredible
that we can rate shoelaces on Amazon or eBay but we haven't figured out
a way to do this for scientific papers. Here's a *suggestion*:

- A neutral citation is +1
- A positive citation is +2
- A negative citation is -1

A neutral citation would be stating a fact and adding reference to
support it, e.g. DNA is a double helix (Watson & Crick, 1953).

A positive citation would be something like: in agreement with Bloggs et
al. (2010), we also find x.

A negative citation might be: we have tested the model proposed by Smith
& Jones (1977) and find that it does not hold.

One further idea (described
[here](http://www.cogsci.nl/blog/miscellaneous/220--sharing-science-searchability-accessibility-and-the-future-of-academic-publishing)) is
to add more context to citation using keywords. Such as "replicating",
"using", "consistent with". This would also help with searching the
scientific literature.

**2. Multiple citations in one article**

Because currently, citations are a +1, there is no way to distinguish
whether the paper giving the citation was mentioning the cited paper in
passing or was entirely focussed on that one paper.

Another way to think about this is that there are multiple reasons to
cite a paper: maybe the method or reagent is being used, maybe they are
talking about Figure 2 showing X or Figure 5 showing Y. What if a paper
is talking about all of these things? In other words, the paper was very
useful. Shouldn't we record that interest?

*Suggestion:* A simple way to do this is to count the number of mentions
in the text of the paper rather than just if the paper appears in the
reference list.

**3. Division of a citation unit for fair credit to each author**

Calculations such as the H-index make no allowance for the position of
the author in the author list (used in biological sciences and some
other fields to denote contribution to the paper). It doesn't make sense
that the 25th author on a 50 author paper receives 100% of the citation
credit as the first or last author. Similarly, the first author on a two
author paper is only credited in the same way as the middle author on a
multi-author paper. The difference in contribution is clear, but the
citation credit is not. This is because the citation credit for the
former paper is worth 25 times that of the latter! This needs to be
equalised. The citation unit, *c* could be divided to achieve fair
credit for authors. At the moment, c=1, but could be multiples (or
negative values) as described above. Here's a *suggestion*:

- First (and multiple first) and last (and co-last) authors get 0.5c
  divided by number of authors.
- The remainder, 0.5c, is divided between all authors.

For a two author paper: first author gets 0.5c and last author gets
0.5c. (0.5c/2+0.5c/2)=0.5c

For a ten author paper with one first author and one last author, first
and last author each get (0.5c/2+0.5c/10)=0.3c and the 5th author
gets (0c+0.5c/10)=0.05c.

Note that the sum for all authors will equal c. So this is equalised for
all papers. These citation credits would then be the basis for H-index
and other calculations for individuals.

Most simply, the denominator would be the number of authors, or -- if we
can figure out a numerical credit system -- each author could be
weighted according to their contribution.

**4. Citations to reviews should be downgraded**

A citation to a review is not equal to a citation to a research paper.
For several reasons. First, they are cited at a higher rate, because
they are a handy catchall citation particularly for the Introduction
section in papers. This isn't fair either and robs credit from the
people who did the work that actually demonstrated what is being
discussed. Second, the achievement of publishing a review is nothing in
comparison to publishing a paper. Publishing a review involves 1) being
asked, 2) writing it, 3) light peer review and some editing and that's
it! Publishing a research paper involves much more effort: having the
idea, getting the money, hiring the people, training the people, getting
a result -- and we are only at the first panel in Fig 1A. Not to mention
the people-hours and arduous peer review process. It's not fair that
citations to reviews are treated as equal to papers when it comes to
research assessment.

*Suggestion:* a citation to a review should be worth a fraction (maybe
1/10th) of a citation to a research paper.

In addition, there are too many reviews written at the moment. I think
this is not because they are particularly useful. Very few actually
contribute a new view or new synthesis of an area, most are just a
summary of the area. Journals like them because they drive up their
citation metrics. Authors like them because it is nice to be invited to
write something -- it means people are interested in what you have to
say... If citations to reviews were downgraded, there would be less
incentive to publish them and we would have more space for all those
real papers that are getting rejected at journals that claim that space
is a limitation for publication.

**5. Self-citations should be eliminated**

If we are going to do all of the above, then self-citation would pretty
soon become a problem. Excessive self-citation would be difficult to
police, and not many scientists would go for a -1 citation to their own
work. So, the simplest thing to do is to eliminate self-citation. Author
identification is crucial here. At the moment this doesn't work well. In
ISI and Scopus, whatever algorithm they use keeps missing some papers of
mine (and my name is not very common at all). I know people who have
been grouped with other people that they have published one or two
papers with. For authors with ambiguous names, this is a real problem.
ORCID is a good solution and maybe having an ORCID (or similar) should
be a requirement for publication in the future.

*Suggestion*: the company or body that collates citation information
needs to accurately assign authors and make sure that research papers
are properly segregated from reviews and other publication types.

**These were five things I thought of to enrich citation data to improve
research assessment, do you have any other ideas?**

---

The post title is taken from '"Yeah" Is What We Had' by Grandaddy from
their album Sumday.


When it comes to measuring the impact of our science, citations are pretty much all we have. And not only that but they only say one thing – yeah – with no context. How can we enrich citation data? Much has been written about how and why and whether or not we should use metrics for research assessment.


&#8220;Yeah&#8221; Is What We Had

I was looking at the latest issue of Cell and marvelling at how many authors there are on each paper. It&#8217;s no secret that the raison d&#8217;être of Cell is to publish the &#8220;last word&#8221; on a topic (although whether it fulfils that objective is debatable). Definitive work needs to be comprehensive. So it follows that this means lots of techniques and ergo lots of authors. This means it is even more impressive when a dual author paper turns up in the table of contents for Cell. Anyway, I got to thinking: has it always been the case that Cell papers have lots of authors and if not, when did that change?
I downloaded the data for all articles published by Cell (and for comparison, J Cell Biol) from Scopus. The records required a bit of cleaning. For example, SnapShot papers needed to be removed and also the odd obituary etc. had been misclassified as an article. These could be quickly removed. I then went back through and filtered out &#8216;articles&#8217; that were less than three pages as I think it is not possible for a paper to be two pages or fewer in length. The data could be loaded into IgorPro and boxplots generated per year to show how author number varied over time. Reviews that are misclassified as Articles will still be in the dataset, but I figured these would be minimal.
<a href="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="110" data-permalink="https://quantixed.org/authors1/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?fit=958%2C1602&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="958,1602" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="Authors1" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?fit=179%2C300&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?fit=612%2C1024&amp;ssl=1" class="alignleft wp-image-110" src="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=302%2C505&#038;ssl=1" alt="Authors1" width="302" height="505" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?w=958&amp;ssl=1 958w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=179%2C300&amp;ssl=1 179w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=768%2C1284&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=612%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 612w" sizes="(max-width: 302px) 100vw, 302px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a>First off: Yes, there are more authors on average for a Cell paper versus a J Cell Biol paper. What is interesting is that both journals had similar numbers of authors when Cell was born (1974) and they crept up together until the early 2000s, when the number of Cell authors kept increasing, or JCell Biol flattened off, whichever way you look at it.
I think the overall trend to more authors is because understanding biology has increasingly required multiple approaches and the bar for evidence seems to be getting higher over time. The initial creep to more authors (1974-2000) might be due to a cultural change where people (technicians/students/women) began to get proper credit for their contributions. However, this doesn&#8217;t explain the divergence between J Cell Biol and Cell in recent years. One possibility is Cell takes more non-cell biology papers and that these papers necessarily have more authors. For example, the polar bear genome was published in Cell (29 authors), and this sort of paper would not appear in J Cell Biol. Another possibility is that J Cell Biol has a shorter and stricter revision procedure, which means that multiple rounds of revision, collecting new techniques and new authors is more limited than it is at Cell. Any other ideas?
<a href="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="115" data-permalink="https://quantixed.org/author/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?fit=520%2C820&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="520,820" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="Author" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?fit=190%2C300&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?fit=520%2C820&amp;ssl=1" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-115" src="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?resize=190%2C300&#038;ssl=1" alt="Author" width="190" height="300" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?w=520&amp;ssl=1 520w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?resize=190%2C300&amp;ssl=1 190w" sizes="(max-width: 190px) 100vw, 190px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a>I also quickly checked whether more authors means more citations, but found no evidence for such a relationship. For papers published in the years 2000-2004, the median citation number for papers with 1-10 authors was pretty constant for J Cell Biol. For Cell, these data mere more noisy. Three-author papers tended to be cited a bit more than those with two authors, but then four author papers were also lower.
The number of authors on papers from our lab ranges from 2-9 and median is 3.5. This would put an average paper from our lab in the bottom quartile for JCB and in the lower 10% for Cell in 2013. Ironically, our 9 author paper (an outlier) was published in J Cell Biol. Maybe we need to get more authors on our papers before we can start troubling Cell with our manuscripts…
— 
The Post title is taken from &#8216;All This and More&#8217; by The Wedding Present from their LP George Best.

I was looking at the latest issue of *Cell* and marvelling at how many
authors there are on each paper. It's no secret that the *raison d'être*
of *Cell* is to publish the "last word" on a topic (although whether it
fulfils that objective is debatable). Definitive work needs to be
comprehensive. So it follows that this means lots of techniques and ergo
lots of authors. This means it is even more impressive when a dual
author paper turns up in the table of contents for *Cell*. Anyway, I got
to thinking: has it always been the case that *Cell* papers have lots of
authors and if not, when did that change?

I downloaded the data for all articles published by *Cell* (and for
comparison, *J Cell Biol*) from Scopus. The records required a bit of
cleaning. For example, SnapShot papers needed to be removed and also the
odd obituary etc. had been misclassified as an article. These could be
quickly removed. I then went back through and filtered out 'articles'
that were less than three pages as I think it is not possible for a
paper to be two pages or fewer in length. The data could be loaded into
IgorPro and boxplots generated per year to show how author number varied
over time. Reviews that are misclassified as Articles will still be in
the dataset, but I figured these would be minimal.

[![Authors1](https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=302%2C505&ssl=1){.alignleft
.wp-image-110 loading="lazy" decoding="async" attachment-id="110"
permalink="https://quantixed.org/authors1/"
orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?fit=958%2C1602&ssl=1"
orig-size="958,1602" comments-opened="1"
image-meta="{\"aperture\":\"0\",\"credit\":\"\",\"camera\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"created_timestamp\":\"0\",\"copyright\":\"\",\"focal_length\":\"0\",\"iso\":\"0\",\"shutter_speed\":\"0\",\"title\":\"\",\"orientation\":\"0\"}"
image-title="Authors1" image-description="" image-caption=""
medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?fit=179%2C300&ssl=1"
large-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?fit=612%2C1024&ssl=1"
width="302" height="505"
srcset="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?w=958&ssl=1 958w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=179%2C300&ssl=1 179w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=768%2C1284&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?resize=612%2C1024&ssl=1 612w"
sizes="(max-width: 302px) 100vw, 302px"
recalc-dims="1"}](https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/authors1.png?ssl=1)First
off: Yes, there are more authors on average for a *Cell* paper versus a
*J Cell Biol* paper. What is interesting is that both journals had
similar numbers of authors when *Cell* was born (1974) and they crept up
together until the early 2000s, when the number of *Cell* authors kept
increasing, or *JCell Biol* flattened off, whichever way you look at it.

I think the overall trend to more authors is because understanding
biology has increasingly required multiple approaches and the bar for
evidence seems to be getting higher over time. The initial creep to more
authors (1974-2000) might be due to a cultural change where people
(technicians/students/women) began to get proper credit for their
contributions. However, this doesn't explain the divergence between *J
Cell Biol* and *Cell* in recent years. One possibility is *Cell* takes
more non-cell biology papers and that these papers necessarily have more
authors. For example, the polar bear genome was published in *Cell* (29
authors), and this sort of paper would not appear in *J Cell Biol*.
Another possibility is that *J Cell Biol* has a shorter and stricter
revision procedure, which means that multiple rounds of revision,
collecting new techniques and new authors is more limited than it is at
*Cell*. Any other ideas?

[![Author](https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?resize=190%2C300&ssl=1){.alignleft
.size-medium .wp-image-115 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
attachment-id="115" permalink="https://quantixed.org/author/"
orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?fit=520%2C820&ssl=1"
orig-size="520,820" comments-opened="1"
image-meta="{\"aperture\":\"0\",\"credit\":\"\",\"camera\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"created_timestamp\":\"0\",\"copyright\":\"\",\"focal_length\":\"0\",\"iso\":\"0\",\"shutter_speed\":\"0\",\"title\":\"\",\"orientation\":\"0\"}"
image-title="Author" image-description="" image-caption=""
medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?fit=190%2C300&ssl=1"
large-file="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?fit=520%2C820&ssl=1"
width="190" height="300"
srcset="https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?w=520&ssl=1 520w, https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?resize=190%2C300&ssl=1 190w"
sizes="(max-width: 190px) 100vw, 190px"
recalc-dims="1"}](https://i0.wp.com/quantixed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/author.png?ssl=1)I
also quickly checked whether more authors means more citations, but
found no evidence for such a relationship. For papers published in the
years 2000-2004, the median citation number for papers with 1-10 authors
was pretty constant for *J Cell Biol*. For *Cell*, these data mere more
noisy. Three-author papers tended to be cited a bit more than those with
two authors, but then four author papers were also lower.

The number of authors on papers from our lab ranges from 2-9 and median
is 3.5. This would put an average paper from our lab in the bottom
quartile for JCB and in the lower 10% for Cell in 2013. Ironically, our
9 author paper (an outlier) was published in J Cell Biol. Maybe we need
to get more authors on our papers before we can start troubling Cell
with our manuscripts...

---  
The Post title is taken from 'All This and More' by The Wedding Present
from their LP George Best.


I was looking at the latest issue of

 Cell

and marvelling at how many authors there are on each paper. It’s no secret that the

 raison d’être

of

 Cell

is to publish the “last word” on a topic (although whether it fulfils that objective is debatable). Definitive work needs to be comprehensive. So it follows that this means lots of techniques and ergo lots of authors.

Messages de Rogue Scholar

Open Access and the incentives for embezzlement

PolEcon of OA Publishing: What are the assets of a journal?

“Yeah” Is What We Had

All This And More