University of Bristol

Mike Taylor

Publishers provide certain services (peer-review management,
typesetting, brand badges, sometimes proof-reading or copy-editing,
archiving, indexing) to the scholarly community.

Those services are of greater and lesser value, provided at higher and
lower levels of quality, and cost greater and lesser amounts. Of course,
we in the scholarly community want high-value, high-quality low-cost
services. This is true whether the publisher in question is a
multinational corporation with a multi-billion-dollar turnover, or a
tiny boutique press run on a non-profit basis for the sheer love of the
process.

Since the scholarly community (researchers, authors, peer-reviewers,
academic editors, etc.) is spending money in exchange for publication
services, and since publishers are providing publication services in
exchange for money, it is clear that **the goals of these two groups
cannot be aligned**. Any money that the scholarly community can save on
publication costs is income lost to publishers; and any additional money
that publishers can charge for their services is money lost to the
scholarly community. I hope that so far, this is uncontroversial.

In the same way, if you sell me a second-hand car, then however well you
and I might get on in civilian life --- we might support the same
football team, drink the same beer, discuss the same novelists, watch
the same films --- then for the purposes of that transaction, what is
good for you (a high price) is bad for me; and vice versa. Note that in
saying this I am not condemning or even criticising you. I am just
stating a fact about transactions.

Now, suppose my wife and I sit down and decide that we need to buy a new
car. We consider Hondas, Fords and Fiats. We weigh up various models on
their merits, compare their prices with their features, and reach a
decision on what we want to buy and how much we're prepared to spend. We
*then* approach the various Honda dealers (or, as we may have decided,
Ford dealers or Fiat dealers). We negotiate with them to agree a price
that we are happy with for a model that is in good enough condition.
Different dealers compete with each other to win our custom by offering
good cars at a low price. This is a functioning market.

What we *don't* do is invite all the dealers to come and join us in our
initial conversation. When my wife and I are discussing how important it
is to us that our new car has variable-speed intermittent
windscreen-wipers, we have that discussion in an environment quite free
of car dealers telling us how great Fiat's intermittent-wipe feature is.
How could we possibly reach a coherent decision on what our own
requirements are if we're bombarded by the claims --- some competing,
some in collusion --- of all the car dealers? And how can we think
sensibly about what we're prepared to spend if we're surrounded by the
dealers' defences of the various financing arrangements they offer?

So in the same way, I feel that the scholarly community needs to figure
out what publication services it needs, free of the influence of
publishers who (and again this is not a criticism) have their own
agenda. *Then*, when we know what we want, we can go to the publishers
who offer the kinds of services we're interested in, and invite them
compete for our business on the basis of features and price.

But involving them in the initial what-we-want discussion can only lead
to confusion, and a compromised outcome. Which is what we've seen for
the last 50 years. This was the fatal flaw that led to the [deeply
flawed Finch
Report](http://svpow.com/2012/06/30/belated-thoughts-on-the-finch-report-on-achieving-open-access/) and
to the [erosion of the RCUK's initially very progressive OA
policy](http://svpow.com/2013/06/17/why-did-rcuk-betray-us-to-barrier-based-publishers/).

As a side-note: my wife and I may end up deciding we don't need a car at
all: we might decide we can walk, or cycle, or take public transport.
Car dealers would hate that: they would advocate against such an outcome
with all their might if they were involved in that discussion. Which is
why they can't be.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[**Note.** This post is adapted from [a message to the Open Scholarship
Initiative mailing
list](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/osi2016-25/3QCkHfRmQnc/NlT2llwiAwAJ).]{.small}


Publishers provide certain services (peer-review management, typesetting, brand badges, sometimes proof-reading or copy-editing, archiving, indexing) to the scholarly community. Those services are of greater and lesser value, provided at higher and lower levels of quality, and cost greater and lesser amounts. Of course, we in the scholarly community want high-value, high-quality low-cost services.

Why publishers cannot be around the table when the scholarly community discusses its communication options

## How things have always been

Traditional scientific journals ask peer-reviewers to do two things:
assess whether a manuscript is scientifically sound, and judge whether
it's sufficiently important to appear in the particular journal it's
been submitted to.

So I could have sent [my 2009 paper on
*Brachiosaurus*](http://svpow.com/2009/09/09/brachiosaurus-brancai-is-not-brachiosaurus/ "“Brachiosaurus” brancai is not Brachiosaurus")
to *Nature*, and the reviewers would (presumably) have said "this is
good science, but not exciting or sexy enough for *Nature*". My article
would have been filtered out of *Nature*, which after all is very
limited for space. Instead, I sent it to the *Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology*, where the exciting-and-sexy bar is calibrated
differently, and it passed both halves of the peer-review test.

## Enter PLoS

The great insight of [*PLoS ONE*](http://www.plosone.org/home.action)
was to recognise the two-pronged nature of peer-review, and to tease
them apart by discarding the second prong completely. Its [guidelines
for
reviewers](http://www.plosone.org/static/reviewerGuidelines.action#about)
are clear:

> Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to
> determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance'
> required by a given journal, *PLoS ONE* uses peer review to determine
> whether a paper is technically sound and worthy of inclusion in the
> published scientific record. Once the work is published in *PLoS ONE*,
> the broader community is then able to discuss and evaluate the
> significance of the article (through the number of citations it
> attracts; the downloads it achieves; the media and blog coverage it
> receives; and the post-publication Notes, Comments and Ratings that it
> receives on *PLoS ONE* etc).

I like to think of this as ["kill 'em all and let God sort it
out"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaud_Amalric), but a less colourful
description that has caught on is "[publish then
filter](http://masscommons.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/here-comes-everybody-publish-then-filter/)".
This name contrasts nicely with the traditional model, which can be
called "[filter then
publish](http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/in_print_filter_then_publish)".

## The models compared

On the whole, traditionalists prefer the older model, because when
filtering is done in advance by professionals it saves them from having
to do their own filtering.

Or does it?

*No.*

There was a time when it probably did: when to keep up with a field, it
would be sufficient to read (or at least scan) the articles in a handful
of the discipline's top journals. But those days are long gone. I took a
random selection of ten PDFs from my own library, and checked what
journals they were in. In that sample, only a single journal came up
more than once: there were two papers from *Acta Paleontologica
Polonica*. The others were from *Acta Geologica Sinica*, the *Anatomical
Record*, *Animal Behaviour*, *Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology*,
*Herpetological Conservation and Biology*, the *Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology* and the *Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society*,
plus a dissertation from the University of Flensburg. (And I am one of
the most narrowly focussed researchers you could meet.)

In the face of such a flood of information, no-one can read everything
that's made it through the filters into all their favourite journals. So
in practice what actually happens is that each of us filters *again* ---
finding relevant publications in a huge range of journals by the social
web we're in: mailing lists, blogs, Twitter, and so on. I believe some
people even use FaceBook.

## A tentative conclusion

So **the real choice is between publish-then-filter or
filter-then-publish-then-filter.**

Put that way, I'm not sure I see very much value in that first filtering
phase. I *know* it's going to let through a ton of stuff that I don't
care about --- all the palaeobotany papers in *Palaeontologia
Electronica*, for example. But that pre-filter is also bound to stop a
lot of stuff that I *would* care about if it were published. If *JVP*
rejects someone's unexciting paper on a partial *Brachiosaurus* specimen
because it's not sufficiently exciting, that may be good for the
journal's "prestige" (whatever that means) but it certainly doesn't
serve me as a researcher: I want *all* known specimens to be published.

So I am coming round to thinking that the PLoS way is best: if a paper
is good science, then why even bother *thinking* about its likely
impact? It's not like that's something we can expect to guess
accurately, anyway. Just publish it and let the ashes fall where they
may.  The world will figure out for itself whether it's worth reading
and citing.


How things have always been Traditional scientific journals ask peer-reviewers to do two things: assess whether a manuscript is scientifically sound, and judge whether it’s sufficiently important to appear in the particular journal it’s been submitted to. So I could have sent my 2009 paper on

 Brachiosaurus

to

 Nature

, and the reviewers would (presumably) have said “this is good science, but not exciting or sexy enough for

Filter-then-publish vs. publish-then-filter

Matt just wrote this, in an email exchange.  It struck a chord in me,
and I thought it deserved a wider audience:

> I hate to admit it, but those two papers (i.e., [Taylor et al.
> 2009](http://svpow.wordpress.com/papers-by-sv-powsketeers/taylor-et-al-2009-on-neck-posture/ "Taylor, Wedel and Naish (2009) on neck posture")
> and
> [2011](http://svpow.wordpress.com/papers-by-sv-powsketeers/taylor-hone-wedel-and-naish-2011-on-sexual-selection-of-sauropod-necks/ "Taylor, Hone, Wedel and Naish (2011) on sexual selection of sauropod necks"))
> that had particularly protracted gestations and lots of review time
> are among the ones I am most proud of. There might be a lesson there
> --- but if so, I'd rather not learn it.

Rats.

::: {#attachment_4196 .wp-caption .alignnone shortcode="caption" style="width: 490px"}
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image-title="cervical-v-right-lateral"
image-description="Cervical V (from an unknown anterior position in the neck) of the STILL undescribed Tendaguru brachiosaurid NHM R5937, “The Archbishop”, in right lateral view. Posterior portion missing.
" image-caption=""
medium-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg?w=300"
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width="480" height="312"
srcset="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg?w=480&h=312 480w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg?w=958&h=624 958w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg?w=150&h=98 150w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg?w=300&h=195 300w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg?w=768&h=500 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](http://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cervical-v-right-lateral.jpeg)

Cervical vertebra V (from an unknown position in the anterior part of
the neck) of the STILL undescribed Tendaguru brachiosaurid NHM R5937,
\"The Archbishop\", in right lateral view. The posterior portion is
missing in action.
:::

Matt just wrote this, in an email exchange.  It struck a chord in me, and I thought it deserved a wider audience:  Rats.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Why publishers cannot be around the table when the scholarly community discusses its communication options

Filter-then-publish vs. publish-then-filter

A lesson we don’t want to learn