Don’s Conference Notes

Column Editor: Donald T. Hawkins (Freelance Editor and Conference Blogger) <dthawkins@verizon.net>

Column Editor’s Note: Because of space limitations, the full text of my conference notes will now be available online in the issues of Against the Grain on Charleston Hub at https://www. charleston-hub.com, and only brief summaries, with links to the full reports, will appear in Against the Grain print issues. — DTH

new Directions in scholarly Publishing: An ssP Virtual seminar

This virtual seminar organized by the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) occurred on October 5-6, 2021 and was entitled “How to Move Fast and Not Break Things: Balancing High-Speed Outputs at the risk of Slamming on the Brakes.” According to its announcement, the seminar was, “a deep dive into the breakneck speed in which our industry is currently transitioning, transforming, and evolving, while also recognizing and highlighting the limits (and uncomfortable consequences) of moving too quickly.”

A Whole new World and scholarship Under Fire

It is our responsibility to control misinformation. 93% of the respondents to a recent poll think we are suffering from an infodemic. Toby Green, Managing Director, Coherent Digital LLC (https://coherentdigital.net/), said that many people are not familiar with the scientific process in which it is not possible to reach a conclusion until many articles have been read. Many journals publish great content but have limited visibility. Publishers usually do not get involved with recasting knowledge into a format for the Web2.0 world. We need to translate scientific data into an interface that the public can use.

Sometimes research exists but is not in the journals, only in research reports which can be difficult to find. How can we merge this content with that published in journals and make it accessible? Scholarly publishers are not generally involved in finding large audiences. We can learn by looking at other media companies on the internet and seeing how they do their business.

Rachel Martin, Global Director of Sustainability at Elsevier, said that the infodemic is about the challenge of finding relevant research; interdisciplinary research is critical.

Trust is important when we disseminate our content. The emphasis is now on open science.

Preprints and new Content

Alexandra Freeman from the Winton Centre at the University of Cambridge noted that peer review is a type of publication and an integral part of the platform.

Joy Owango, AfrikArxiv (https://info.africarxiv.org/) and University of Nairobi, said preprints have been a game changer in helping researchers to improve their output. We must be realistic and understand why we need print repositories. Michele Avissar-Whiting, Editor-in-Chief, Research Square (https://www.researchsquare.com/) said preprints and their platforms operate in a parallel track to traditional publishing. An Editor-in-Chief of a preprint platform thinks about operations and maintaining academic integrity. Preprints vs. the World • What are the headwinds facing preprints as a new form of communicating research? • What are the problems and shortcomings in preprints as they exist now?

An obvious shortcoming today is trust.

The reason that preprints have become prominent is because the publishing system has failed to communicate research in a timely way.

A complete disruption and paradigm shift is coming. We do not need to wait until publishers change their ways of doing things. We must get accustomed to a system where not everything is peer reviewed.

Today, writing is incentivized, not reviewing what other people have done. Critiquing someone else’s work constructively is a skill that we rely on.

Preprint singularity: Are we moving toward a preprint/journal convergence?

Preprints and journals are now converging because journals are using preprint servers as a submission platform.

How do preprint servers become sustainable? How do we fund them and make that funding sustainable, equitable, and fair?

Build the community and see how it can function with a moderate fee for submission. Revenue can be generated by leveraging the services offered such as helping with manuscript preparation.

In the description of this panel, we said that the question is no longer if you will upload a preprint of your work, but when or how quickly you will be able to do it. Is this true or false? During the pandemic we had to publish results quickly, but now we have stepped back and are reconsidering. Because there are cultural differences in how we share research, many people are still wary of preprint servers.

new Directions in Open Access

Three pairs of attendees each had a conversation about OA.

John Sherer, Director, University of North Carolina (UNC) Press, and Kamran Naim, Head, Open Science, CERN

UNC Press is experimenting with a digital production process. Many authors have a perception that OA is a different level of scholarship. A strong preference for print still exists, especially with large books. What happens to print in the long term? Does it take a big hit when an OA version appears?

CERN hosts the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3, https://scoap3.org/), which has been studying the transition of textbooks to OA. Many publishers objected to a loss of revenue from sales of leading textbooks in their discipline. Creating an OA version does not mean dropping print.

Martin Eve, Professor, Literature, Technology, and Publishing at Birkbeck and the Open Library of Humanities, University of London, and Susan Doerr, Associate Director, University of Minnesota Press

Publishers need to determine what should be digital to reach the most readers globally. Researchers may think that after a platform has been built they are forced to adapt their work to it.

Sara Rouhi, Director, Strategic Partnerships, PLoS and Raym Crow, Managing Partner, Chain Bridge Group (http://www.chainbridgegroup.com/).

So far, there has been no open model for publishers to reach libraries. They will benefit by working with consortia because of the reach they get.

The broader the base of subscribers, the harder it is to get everyone to subscribe, which may result in a reversion to a subscription model. Let’s Get Spicy! What about the expense we invest in making physical products? Much engagement is around digital, and the print is an afterthought. What type of scholarship can be published digitally first?

What’s the issue? impact and Metrics Updates

Perspectives on Metrics

Marie McVeigh, Head, Editorial Selections, Clarivate (https:// clarivate.com/) said that metrics are not a substitute for judgement but are a tool to guide it.

Rebecca Kennison, Principal, K|N Consultants (http://knconsultants.org/): In the humanities, metrics are all we have. Constraints are critical; context is also important.

Josh Nicholson, Co-Founder and CEO, scite (https://scite.ai/): Metrics are diverse, and we should be cautious about using them for everything. We need context.

How can we make best use of metrics?

Some articles never get cited; does that mean they are not useful? A work might be cited even though it is not part of the traditional publication record.

Impact means many things to people, so we may start to use metrics in new ways. Merriam Webster’s definition of impact: the moment when you have changed your environment, or when you make people think a different way. If one metric is not perfect for something that does not mean all metrics are not appropriate.

Where is the impact factor being used? The impact factor (IF) lets us see the whole picture. Not all impact is the same. We talk about the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as if it is the only data point we publish. Metrics do not stand alone; we must look at them in the context in which they are provided.

What about data citation?

There are different DOI registries. Data is treated differently than articles. Do data citations count in a researcher’s output? How easy is it to use and understand the data? Much of it lives on GitHub (https://github.com/).

Funds, Funders, and Funding

The Wellcome Trust (https://wellcome.org/who-we-are) is politically and financially independent and does not receive any funds from the public. Nearly 80% of Wellcome’s publications are openly accessible, and since the OA policy was introduced, there has been an average 5% annual increase in the proportion of OA articles. Researchers working in different fields are very interested in OA; therefore, funders should recognize that one size does not fit all. Librarians have been very helpful to researchers in keeping track of the rules and regulations for receiving funding. OA is not just a requirement; it should be a right! We should all have the opportunity to publish OA. Senior Research Officers (SROs) have an increasingly centralized role in looking after research, and it is a big job, encompassing titles and reporting, academic and administrative functions, and successful scientists. They have a revenue role in some universities and have a lot of power and influence on budgeting, space allocation, and convening authority.

There have been downward pressures on revenue sources, but grants have been stable. To support research, some funders provide funds in addition to the direct costs of the research, but even so, many universities have had to reduce their general funds because of revenue constraints and budget cuts. On balance, research does not pay for itself.

The function of publishers is becoming more important; they must view themselves as compliance partners for authors, librarians, and funders in a progressive journey that is good for research and its impact.

new Directions in Tools for Discoverability, Findability, shareability, and impact

There are limited funds to spend on new technology. Will this come back to haunt us?

We must have a lot of integrity and not invest casually in new technology. Our industry has taken a long time to adopt things that many of us think are common sense. Do we have the ability to be agile?

What portion of a strategic plan should be devoted to innovation?

Innovation permeates every area of a company and is a mindset with processes around it. Organizations lose sight of the problem they are trying to solve and who they are trying to serve. Inefficiencies are not necessarily bad because we are figuring things out as we go along. If we move collectively, how much stronger would our industry be?

Continuous development of a core business will lead to innovation. Should the main product of a company be the technology? Are large publishers buying technology companies because they don’t want to be in the content business?

We have siloed ourselves and criticize what we do not understand. Our community needs to be more open. We should dare to do things, make mistakes, and move to things that are successful.

Read the full report at https://www.charleston-hub. com/2021/12/dons-conference-notes-new-directions-in-scholarly-publishing-an-ssp-virtual-seminar/.

Donald T. Hawkins is an information industry freelance writer based in Pennsylvania. In addition to blogging and writing about conferences for Against the Grain, he blogs the Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian conferences for Information Today, Inc. (ITI) and maintains the Conference Calendar on the ITI Website (http://www.infotoday.com/calendar.asp). He is the Editor of Personal Archiving: Preserving Our Digital Heritage, (Information Today, 2013) and Co-Editor of Public Knowledge: Access and Benefits (Information Today, 2016). He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and has worked in the online information industry for over 50 years.