Cameron Neylon

A number of things have prompted me to be thinking about what makes a
piece of writing "original" in a web based world where we might draft
things in the open, get informal public peer review, where un-refereed
conference posters can be published online, and pre-print servers of
submitted versions of papers are increasingly widely used. I'm in the
process of correcting an invited paper that derives mostly from a set of
blog posts and had to revise another piece because it was too much like
a blog post but what got me thinking most was a discussion on the [PLoS
ONE](http://www.plosone.org) Academic Editors forum about the
originality requirements for PLoS ONE.

In particular the question arose of papers that have been previously
peer reviewed and published, but in journals that are not indexed or
that very few people have access to. Many of us have one or two papers
in journals that are essentially inaccessible, local society journals or
just journals that were never online, and never widely enough
distributed for anyone to find. I have a paper in [Complex
Systems](http://www.complex-systems.com/) ([volume 17, issue
4](http://www.complex-systems.com/Archive/hierarchy/abstract.cgi?vol=17&iss=4&art=04)
since you ask) that is not indexed in [Pubmed](http://pubmed.org), only
[available in a preprint archive](http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/64707/) and
has effectively no citations. Probably because it isn't in an index and
no-one has ever found it.Â  But it describes a nice piece of work that
we went through hell to publish because we hoped someone might find it
useful.

Now everyone agreed, and this is what the PLoS ONE submission policy
says quite clearly, that such a paper cannot be submitted for
publication. This is essentially a restatement of the [Ingelfinger
Rule](http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13488). But
being the contrary person I am I started wondering *why*. For a
commercial publisher with a subscripton business model it is clear that
you don't want to take on content that you can't exert a copyright over,
but for a non-profit with a mission to bring science to wider audience
does this really make sense? If the science is currently unaccessible
*and* is of appropriate quality for a given journal *and* the authors
are willing to pay the costs to bring it to a wider public, why is this
not allowed?

The reason usually given is that if something is "already published"
then we don't need another version. But if something is effectively
inaccessible is that not true. Are preprints, conference proceedings,
even privately circulated copies, not "already published". There is also
still a strong sense that there needs to be a "version of record", that
there is a potential for confusion with different versions. There is a
need for better practice in the citation of different versions of work
but this is a problem we already have. Again a version in an obscure
place is unlikely to cause confusion. Another reason is that refereeing
is a scarce resource that needs to be protected. This points to our
failure to publish and re-use referee's reports within the current
system, to actually realise the value that we (claim to) ascribe to
them. But again, if the author is willing to pay for this, why should
they not be allowed to?

However, in my view, at the core to the rejection of "republication" is
an objection to the idea that people might manage to get double credit
for a single publication. In a world where the numbers matter people do
game the system to maximise the number of papers they have. Credit where
credit's due is a good principle and people feel, rightly, uneasy with
people getting more credit for the same work published in the same form.
I think there are three answers to this, one social, one technical, and
one...well lets just call it heretical.

Firstly placing two versions of a manuscript on the same CV is simply
bad practice. Physicists don't list both the ArXiv and journal versions
of papers on their publication lists. In most disciplines, where
conference papers are not peer reviewed, they are listed separate to
formally published peer reviewed papers in CVs. We have strong social
norms around "double counting". These differ from discipline to
discipline as to whether work presented at conferences can be published
as a journal paper, whether pre-prints are widely accepted, and how
control needs to be exerted over media releases but while there may be
differences over what constitutes "the same paper" there are storng
social norms that you only publish the same thing once.Â  These social
norms are at the root of the objection to re-publication.

Secondly the technical identification of duplicate *available* versions,
either deliberately by the authors to avoid potential confusion, or in
an investigative roleto identify potential misconduct, is now trivial. A
quick search can rapidly identify duplicate versions of papers. I note
paranthetically that it would be even easier with a fully open access
corpus but where there is either misconduct, or the potential for
confusion, tools like [Turnitin](http://turnitin.com/static/index.html)
and [Google](http://google.com) will sort it out for you pretty quickly.

Finally though, for me the strongest answer to the concern over "double
credit" is that this is a deep indication we have the whole issue
backwards. Are we really more concerned about someone having an extra
paper on their CV than we are about getting the science into the hands
of as many people as possible? This seems to me a strong indication that
we value the role of the paper as a virtual notch on the bedpost over
its role in communicating results. We should never forget that STM
publishing is a multibillion dollar industry supported primarily through
public subsidy. There are cheaper ways to provide people with CV points
if that is all we care about.

This is a place where the author (or funder) pays model really comes it
in its own. If an author feels strongly enough that a paper will get to
a wider audience in a new journal, if they feel strongly enough that it
will benefit from that journal's peer review process, and they are
prepared to pay a fee for that publication, why should they be prevented
from doing so? If that publication does bring that science to a wider
audience, is not a public service publisher discharging their mission
through that publication?

Now I'm not going to recommend this as a change in policy to PLoS. It's
far too radical and would probably raise more problems in terms of
public relations than it would solve in terms of science communication.
But I do want to question the motivations that lie at the bottom of this
traditional prohibition. As I have said before and will probably say
over and over (and over) again. We are spending public money here. We
need to be clear about what it is we are buying, whether it is primarily
for career measurement or communication, and whether we are getting the
best possible value for money. If we don't ask the question, then in my
view we don't deserve the funding.


A number of things have prompted me to be thinking about what makes a piece of writing “original” in a web based world where we might draft things in the open, get informal public peer review, where un-refereed conference posters can be published online, and pre-print servers of submitted versions of papers are increasingly widely used.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Some (probably not original) thoughts about originality