The Journalology newsletter helps editors and publishing professionals keep up to date with scholarly publishing, and guides them on how to build influential scholarly journals.
Journalology #59: Welcome to 2024
Hello fellow journalologists, Welcome to 2024! The festive break has given us a chance to recharge our batteries and take stock of what happened last year, which was certainly eventful. Our industry is going through a period of rapid change; I’ll do my best to keep you updated on the latest developments throughout 2024. This afternoon I'm flying to Berlin to attend the APE 2024 conference. I hope to see some of you there. I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends and meeting new people over the next few days. Please do say hello if you see me around. NewsIOP Publishing donates APC revenue from retracted papers to Research4LifeResearch4Life is excited to announce that IOP Publishing has made a meaningful donation to Research4Life, originating from a unique source – the Article Publication Charges (APCs) from retracted papers. IOP Publishing has pledged to continue channelling future APCs from retracted papers to Research4Life. Research4Life (press release) JB: Bravo IOP Publishing. This is an excellent way to get a round a difficult problem. I’d be interested to know how other publishers are handling APCs from retracted papers. Pocketing the revenues is inappropriate, in my opinion, even though costs were incurred. Sustainability Passes Scopus Rigorous Reevaluation ProcessWe are pleased to confirm that our journal, Sustainability (2022 CiteScore 5.8, Impact Factor 3.9), has successfully passed Scopus' rigorous reevaluation process, reaffirming its position within their esteemed database. With a consistent presence since 2009, Sustainability's 15-year tenure in Scopus underscores its academic rigor and relevance.
MDPI maintains strong relationships with various multidisciplinary databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO, ProQuest, and others. In 2023, MDPI garnered 54 new acceptances in Scopus, bringing the total to 269, along with 29 in Web of Science, totalling 239, 52 in EBSCO, and 83 in DOAJ. These achievements underscore MDPI's commitment to upholding exemplary academic standards across a broad spectrum of disciplines.
MDPI (Press release) JB: You may wonder why a publisher would issue a press release about a journal passing reassessment for indexing. Well, on January 2 Retraction Watch published a story Exclusive: MDPI journal undergoing reevaluation at Scopus, indexing on hold. Three days later Retraction Watch published an update Elsevier’s Scopus to continue indexing MDPI’s Sustainability after reevaluation. tl;dr = no news here after all. A lot can happen in 3 days it seems. Regardless, the fact that Sustainability passed muster is significant because Sustainability is one of MDPI’s largest journals. The number of articles published in another MDPI journal, IJERPH, plummeted when it was delisted from Web of Science last year. Indexers wield immense power; innocent until proven guilty is an important concept to uphold. Healthcare | Section “Forensic Medicine” Is DiscontinuedWe would like to share with you an update on the journal's structure. After careful evaluation and analysis, we have made the decision to discontinue the Section “Forensic Medicine” of Healthcare (ISSN: 2227-9032). This decision was based on a comprehensive review of the Section's scope and compatibility with our journal's overall vision. We acknowledge that the Section may have gone beyond the original scope of the journal. As part of our dedication to maintaining the quality, focus, and relevance of the content we offer to our readers, we think that concentrating our efforts and resources on other existing Sections will better meet the needs and interests of our readers and contributors. MDPI announcement (Rahman Shiri) JB: Presumably this is a pre-emptive action to try to avoid delisting by databases. You can see the list of articles that are included in the “Forensic Medicine” section here. Genuine images in 2024Proofig screens images for duplication and other types of manipulation. It is similar to the iThenticate plagiarism detection software (which Science has been using for 7 years), but it works on images rather than text. Science has been piloting Proofig for several months with clear evidence that problematic figures can be detected prior to publication, so its use will expand to all papers under consideration that present relevant images. This should help identify both honest mistakes and fraudulent activity before a decision is made on publication. Prior to the pilot phase, Science had been conducting “human-eye” image checks on a portion of papers, so Proofig is a natural next step. This tool will enhance Science’s review process and reduce the potential for human error because it captures many more alterations. Science (H. Holden Thorp) JB: The press release accompanying this editorial can be read here. Tools like Proofig can be helpful, but screening every image in every paper has significant logistical and cost implications. US project seeks standard way to communicate research retractionsImplementing the recommendations will benefit stakeholders in many ways. Automatic notifications about retractions could alert authors that they have cited a retracted paper, prompting them to investigate whether the retraction affects their work. Such notifications could also go to funders.
Beyond notifications, publishers could automatically mark the bibliographies of published articles if a paper they cite is retracted. PubMed Central, a free digital repository for research literature, is known for this kind of automatic marking.
There’s a lot of scepticism in the research world about the value that publishers are adding. By adopting these measures, publishers can show that they are making a long-term commitment to the content and to building trust and accountability.
Nature Index (Dalmeet Singh Chawla interviews Jodi Schneider) JB: This relates to NISO’s CREC (Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern) Working Group. Scopus will remove the Source Homepage links from all Source details pagesWhen we provide the link to the Source Homepage, we bear the responsibility and accountability for its accuracy. However, maintaining these links is challenging and the quality of the links may be poor in certain cases. For example, scenarios may arise where the registration of a journal website lapses, or a genuine journal website is transferred to a new URL and the ‘old’ URL is taken over by another party. In a more severe situation, if a journal is hijacked, malicious actors may create a fraudulent duplicate of the journal’s website or mimic the appearance of the original journal to deceive researchers. Elsevier Scopus Blog (Rachel McCullough) JB: This story in Retraction Watch provides the background. Springer Nature increases commitment to early sharing and transparency in peer review
In Review, the innovative service which integrates early sharing and increased transparency with the journal submission and peer review process, is now available on over 1000 Springer Nature journals, including the Discover Journals. With the service already integrated across its BMC, Nature and Springer portfolios, the latest roll out means In Review is now available on over a third of Springer Nature’s portfolio, enabling more authors to benefit from the service.
Authors submitting to an In Review title can opt in or out to the service. Those opting in are able to easily cite and share their work while it is still under review, and receive real time updates on the peer review process. If the paper is rejected after peer review, the preprint continues to remain available on the platform, but with all information about imprint and peer review status removed. A further 100+ journals will be added before year end.
Springer Nature (press release) JB: I’ve previously noted that preprints are increasing very slowly over time, at least in the biomedical space, as the below graph demonstrates (taken from Europe PMC here). Many of the In Review preprints are included in the ‘Research Square’ portion of this graph (grey colour). The number of preprints publishing on the Research Square platform in the calendar month of November over the past 5 years were:
It would be interesting to know what the opt-in rate was over this time period. More journals are being added, according to the latest Springer Nature press release, but the number of new preprints had remained fairly constant over the past 3 years. Does this mean that fewer authors are choosing to publish their preprint by opting in to In Review than happened previously? The future of science communication, todayWe’re in the midst of a revolution in science communication. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is at the forefront of this changing landscape. Ten years ago, CSHL launched bioRxiv (pronounced bio-archive). This innovative platform gives millions of readers across the globe free access to thousands of studies as “preprints” before they are published in traditional scientific journals. Today, the latest biomedical breakthroughs are only a couple of clicks away. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Nick Wurm) JB: Here’s the number of preprints that were added to bioRxiv in the calendar month of November, using Europe PMC data as before. Is this the start of ‘a revolution in science communication’? Only time will tell, but based on the numbers below there hasn’t been much growth over the past 5 years. PubMed has so far indexed nearly 1.7m articles (all publication types) in 2023, so only a tiny fraction have been preprinted.
Accessibility update: arXiv now offers papers in HTML formatarXiv’s goal is equitable access to scientific research for all – and to achieve this, we have been working to make research papers more accessible for arXiv users with disabilities. We are happy to announce that as of Monday, December 18th, arXiv is now generating an HTML formatted version of all papers submitted in TeX/LaTeX (as long as papers were submitted on or after December 1st, 2023 and HTML conversion is successful – more on this below).
HTML is not replacing PDF but will be an additional format available for arXiv users. Submitters will be invited to preview the HTML version of their papers during submission time, the same way they have always done with PDF.
arXiv blog (Charles Frankston) PNAS Announces New Guidelines for the Retention of Raw DataAuthors agree to make original data and code underlying their manuscript fully available upon request during the peer review process or post-publication. This includes all raw visual data including, but not limited to, blots, gels, or micrographs. All data and any direct outputs from imaging systems must be retained in their raw, unprocessed versions. Failure or refusal to provide data upon request may be grounds for rejection of the manuscript or retraction of the article. In order to respond to potential post-publication concerns, PNAS strongly recommends that authors retain all original data in perpetuity. PNAS Updates (announcement) Wiley, Aries Systems and Charlesworth Partner to Enhance Author Communications in ChinaCharlesworth has partnered with Wiley, a global leader in research and learning, and Aries Systems, a leading technology provider of workflow management solutions, to power an improved author experience in China by integrating message notifications from Aries’ Editorial Manager® (EM) into WeChat using the award-winning Charlesworth Gateway.
This integrated solution allows Wiley to identify which manuscript status milestones to communicate to their authors directly in EM. The Gateway notification service provides authors with a convenient way to check the status of their submitted manuscripts through WeChat, eliminating the need for additional email correspondence. Streamlined publisher workflows and increased transparency for authors will result in improved efficiency, cost savings, and an enhanced Wiley-author relationship.
Enago (press release) JB: I was impressed with the Charlesworth WeChat functionality when I saw it in action at the 2022 ALPSP awards. Authors based in China use email less frequently than WeChat, so communicating with them about their paper using WeChat is a sensible strategy. Other news storiesACS Publications now provides open access reporting through OA Switchboard RCP partners with Elsevier to publish Clinical Medicine and Future Healthcare Journal | RCP London CACTUS unveils Paperpal Preflight for Editorial Desk Data training revealed as top unmet need for UK and US researchers in integrity surveys Taylor & Francis Online Streamlines Researcher Access to Cited Articles Through GetFTR Integration ASM International, AACR and SciSummary latest to join GetFTR MDPI and TU Delft Adopting Flat Fee Model in Extended Partnership MDPI Appoints New Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jennifer Schivas and David Leeming become CEO and CTO of 67 Bricks NISO Releases Content Profile/Linked Document Standard Former Stanford president retracts Nature paper as another gets expression of concern What analyzing 30 years of US federal research misconduct sanctions revealed SSP Selects Access Innovations, Inc. for Taxonomy and Auto Tagging Services Elsevier introduces digital enhancements to medical literature, advancing article-based education OpinionWhy We Support and Encourage the Use of Large Language Models in NEJM AI SubmissionsAt NEJM AI, we have therefore elected to allow the use of LLMs. Our two key conditions are first, that the use of LLMs is appropriately acknowledged by the authors. This standard is the same as for any tool or resource that is used in a substantive way by authors in their scientific work, including experimental reagents, animal models, data sets, software systems, or third-party copyediting services. Second, we require that the authors be completely accountable for the correctness and originality of the submitted work. Likewise, the same quality standards for clarity, exposition, and strength of the scientific arguments will be applied to all papers submitted to NEJM AI, regardless of how the text was generated. Using an LLM does not absolve one of the responsibility to write well and to avoid plagiarism. Above all, the insights in any paper we consider must be original, novel, and clearly articulated. NEJM AI (Daphne Koller et al) JB: It would be very odd for a journal with ‘AI’ in the title not to allow the use of LLMs, but this is still noteworthy because NEJM has developed a reputation for conservatism over the years. Cal Newport’s recent essay in The New Yorker is worth reading. Does our scholarly publishing community generally fall into the category of “techno-selectionists”? Techno-selectionists believe that we should continue to encourage and reward people who experiment with what comes next. But they also know that some experiments end up causing more bad than good. Techno-selectionists can be enthusiastic about artificial intelligence, say, while also taking a strong stance on settings where we should block its use. They can marvel at the benefits of the social Internet without surrendering their kids’ mental lives to TikTok. End the glaring inequity in international science collaborationsFor many, it will come as no surprise that richer countries dominate collaborations. But the extent of this inequity must be a wake-up call for funders and publishers, which should not allow the status quo to continue.
The Nature Index tracks publications and authorships, focusing on a select tranche of journals in which, according to its own data, global-south researchers struggle to publish. It needs to recognize that quality research from the global south might not be reaching this subset of publications, and take steps to address the imbalance. The index is already in the process of broadening the scope of the subjects it covers, and as part of this will consider the publications and other venues through which global-south researchers share their work.
Nature (unsigned editorial) Devise an ethical open-access publishing modelBut taxpayers underwrite scholarly publishing for publicly funded institutions, irrespective of the business model, and so the institutions — rather than individual researchers — should pay the APCs. And those institutions need to collaborate with publishers to produce a financially viable, ethical open-access scholarly publishing model. Lobbying your vice-chancellor or president, rather than complaining to journal editors, should facilitate the process. Nature (Mark Elgar) “On the ruins of seriality”: The scientific journal and the nature of the scientific lifeAfter World War II scientists and commercial publishers based in or originating from continental Europe worked together to pursue their own agenda of openness. In contrast with Bernal’s proposals, their conception of openness was not so much focused on rationalizing the publishing apparatus, but rather on redefining what counted as internationally significant research. The key element of their agenda was to counterbalance the hegemony of American and British journals. The key strategy was to transfer the cost of journal publishing from the author to the user through the introduction of a subscription-based system. As a result, the periodical literature became more inclusive of knowledge produced by new or marginalized scientific communities: in emerging research fields, in formerly Nazi-occupied Europe, in the Eastern Bloc, with Marxist leanings, with nostalgias for prewar conditions of science, and, to a limited extent, in the Global South. Endeavour (Dorien Daling) JB: If you have an interest in better understanding the history of the scientific journal, read this. How to address the geographical bias in academic publishingInstead, we extend this by recommending that editors require research articles from a specific region cite relevant articles from journals within that region and on submission, provide justification where this is not feasible. Given the importance of IF, this would gradually improve citation metrics of Global South journals by encouraging authors to publish in Global South journals, even if primarily for the purpose of self-citation. Though this might seem like circular reasoning, increasing citations could help redress the exclusion of Global South journals from Journal Citation Reports which results in their not being indexed and reduced visibility in search results. International journals should also highlight Global South researchers by intentionally soliciting articles from them, and publishing special issues that disseminate their research. As this does not improve the IF of Global South journals, we suggest in addition, copublishing with Global South journals and showcasing these articles within Global North publishing spaces, given their larger reach. BMJ Global Health (Juliana A Bol et al) preLights – curating preprints for the biological community since 2018In line with its aim of supporting the biological community, The Company of Biologists hosts three community sites. One of these, preLights, has been helping to stimulate and shape discussions around biological preprints for almost six years now. At the heart of preLights is a dynamic community of early-career researchers who meticulously curate and showcase preprints spanning a wide range of biological fields. These dedicated ‘preLighters’ also initiate informal, engaging and inclusive discussions with preprint authors. By providing a curated platform for preprints, preLights not only accelerates the sharing of the latest research findings but also allows scientists to spot emerging trends in various disciplines. Journal of Cell Science (Reinier Prosée) The Future of Data in Research Publishing: From Nice to Have to Need to Have?The ubiquity of AI-generated text will continue to diminish our ability to trust digital content, including published research, unless and until AI companies are required to disclose the provenance and verifiability of the content on which their large language models are trained and the reasoning algorithms employed. Already, the research community and general public are demanding more transparency of the 'evidence' necessary to discern trustworthy content. For readers to trust digital content, they need information about the provenance of assertions. Experts in a domain need the ability to audit data and to inspect statistical analyses underlying those assertions. Harvard Data Science Review (Christine L. Borgman and Amy Brand) Data Sharing — A New Era for Research Funded by the U.S. GovernmentRather than having each institute or agency be responsible for establishing its own independent platform with a relatively narrow application (e.g., BioLINCC for the NHLBI), the NIH could create a central platform for widespread use. This approach would mirror the National Library of Medicine’s efforts when it launched the original version of MEDLINE in 1964, PubMed in 1996, and ClinicalTrials.gov in 2000. Creating this type of public resource would permit economies of scale, particularly for data storage and management, and help ensure data security and availability of analytic resources for users, such as virtual private networks equipped with statistical software. The platform’s design could be informed by the FAIR principles, which are intended to ensure that data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and the platform could promote responsible data stewardship and transparency by publicly listing available trials with key metadata, such as hyperlinks to ClinicalTrials.gov entries and study publications, and by posting data-reuse requests. The New England Journal of Medicine (Joseph S. Ross, Joanne Waldstreicher and Harlan M. Krumholz) JB: Steven Salzberg wrote an opinion piece in Forbes about this NEJM article that provides additional context. Data sharing needs to improve, but the key challenge is to do it in a cost effective and standardised way that limits bureaucracy for researchers. Crucially, the needs of users needs to be at the forefront of any design work. Other opinion articlesPredatory journals: How to recognise and keep clear! Breaking free from academic scams: Five key reflections on the cloned journal conundrum (paywall) Kitchen Essentials: An Interview with Chris Shillum of ORCID Kitchen Essentials: An Interview with Phoebe McMellon of GeoScienceWorld Library Licensing Strategies AI and scholarly publishing - language assistance The weaponisation of forensic research auditing will not resolve systemic research misconduct The Truth Is in There: The Library of Babel and Generative AI Research on Artificial Intelligence – the global divides Journal ClubHow do editors use editorials to lead their journals? Insights from the field of human resource management (paywall)My study suggests that editorials are rarely used as a leadership practice, at least in OB/HRM journals, despite the suggested roles or purposes they could play for journals, disciplines, and professions. Perhaps, they are simply being overlooked by journal editors who juggle multiple tasks in their professional lives. Perhaps, their significance for journal development has been overrated by the scholarly community for years. It is similarly possible that editorials are losing their relevance as beacons that guide and inspire the audience due to the changing and highly competitive publishing environment. Learned Publishing (Maria S. Plakhotnik) JB: Writing editorials takes time. Most journals are run by academics who are juggling multiple (and increasing) responsibilities, so it’s unsurprising that editorials are used less frequently than they used to be. I believe that editorials are one of the best ways of creating a character and voice for a journal, which raises visibility and helps to drive submissions. I don’t have empirical evidence for that claim, of course. I hope it’s true, though. Prevalence of Short Peer Reviews in 3 Leading General Medical JournalsThus, under the assumption that a very low word count reflects, at least to some degree, the quality of a peer review, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of very short peer reviews in 3 leading general medical journals:
The BMJ, PLOS Medicine, and BMC Medicine. We defined very short reviews as having fewer than 200 words in our primary analyses, which is based on the rationale that a review that is shorter than a typical abstract is unlikely to provide constructive feedback... We focused on leading general medical journals, reasoning that if high-tier journals must often rely on low-quality reviews, lower-tier journals are likely to do so even more frequently.
JAMA Network Open (Pascal Geldsetzer et al) JB: The authors “found that 20.9% of initial editorial decisions were made according to review sets in which reviews of fewer than 200 words constituted 50% or more of the reviews.” The big assumption here is that a low word count means a poor quality review. Another way to look at it, perhaps, is that some papers that are subsequently published are of high quality at the point of submission, and so the peer reviewers are able to make fewer recommendations to improve the paper. One of the major advantages of transparent and open peer review is that this kind of study is made possible. Figure accessibility in journals: analysis of alt-text in 2021–23Our findings suggest that leading journals do not make use of alt-text to promote accessibility of scientific findings. Standards provided by WCAG [Web Content Accessibility Guidelines] for the past 24 years have advised that alt-text should serve the equivalent purpose of non-text content. However, when alt-text was used by leading journal websites in our study, it did not meet these standards. Although captions and article text sometimes provide overlapping information, figures, videos, and equations, which are integral components of scientific literature, are widely inaccessible to clinicians, scientists, students, and patients with visual disabilities. The Lancet (Matthew Crane et al) JB: The authors go on to say: We further examined accessibility statements and corresponding alt-text practices for the ten most represented publishers within our primary sample (constituting 166 [66·4%] of 250 journals). We identified that nine (90·0%) of these publishers, including Nature Portfolio (44 [17·6%] journals), Elsevier (43 [17·2%] journals), and Annual Reviews (18 [7·2%] journals), stated a commitment to following WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1. However, alt-text practices across these publishers did not comply with either WCAG version. Authorship inequalities in global health research: the IeDEA Southern Africa collaborationThis analysis of a global health collaboration co-led by South African and Swiss investigators showed little evidence of authorship parasitism. There were stark inequalities in authorship position, with women occupying more first and men more last author positions and researchers from LLMIC being ‘stuck in the middle’ on the byline. Global health research collaborations should monitor, analyse and address authorship inequalities. BMJ Global Health (Veronika W Skrivankova et al) And finally...A few weeks ago a Journalology reader emailed me about a project they’d been working on last year. In January 2023 the product team wrote a fake Journalology article, dated December 2023. In their words: Beginning with the end in mind is always a good strategy. I'm looking forward to seeing what 2024 brings. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Until next time, James P.S. If your organisation would like to sponsor this newsletter, please email me (james@journalology.com) and I'd be happy to send you the 2024 sponsorship pack. |
Journalology
The Journalology newsletter helps editors and publishing professionals keep up to date with scholarly publishing, and guides them on how to build influential scholarly journals.
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, Many of us took part in Peer Review Week, which ends today. The sheer scale of the number of events was overwhelming (see here). You can watch my own contribution, alongside Danielle Padula from Scholastica, on YouTube by clicking the play button below: We talked about how the role of a journal editor may be affected by advances in technology. (My 8-year-old son was very impressed that I’m a ’YouTuber’, but he complained: “I didn’t...
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, Are scholarly publishers a force for good? Many academics certainly don’t perceive commercial publishers that way. This week we consider whether (with apologies to Stephen Sondheim): We ain’t no delinquents, We’re misunderstood. Deep down inside us there is good! The same topics come up again and again in this newsletter: open access equity, research integrity, peer review, reproducibility and so on. This week is no different. There’s a...
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, This week I attended the ALPSP annual conference and met some Journalology readers at the event, which was lots of fun. The quality of the presentations and panel discussions was excellent; the organising committee and wider ALPSP team did a fantastic job. I’m still reflecting on what I learned, in particular what the future might hold for small society publishers in an open access world where scale wins. The star of the show was...