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Amanda is proud of publications put out by Bioprotection Aotearoa… but is there another way?
Our value as researchers is largely measured by the number of peer reviewed publications we produce and the impact factor rankings of the journals which hold those publications. The higher the impact factor a journal has, the more prestigious the recognition. But peer reviewed publications in high impact journals are effectively locked away from the public, as they are inaccessible to those who don’t subscribe to the journal. Are alternatives, like open access publication and other information sharing mechanisms, worth pursuing as a researcher?
I’m not denying the merit of publishing in top journals like Nature and Science. With respective impact factors of 69.5 and 44.7 (which is the average number of times each article from the journal will be cited in a year), these are seen as the holy grail of academic success and have incredible reach in the scientific community. To put these numbers in perspective, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered a significant achievement, while 3 is good and the average score is less than 1.
While we are fortunate to have published BA and related BA work in both Nature and Science, not all our research is appropriate for these journals. Most publications end up in journals that are more discipline specific. However, the need to publish research in some of these emerging and niche journals can be risky. The rise of predatory journals and predatory publishing means the long-standing way of communicating our original work has become complicated. Predatory journals, also known as pseudo journals, prioritise their own existence over research quality. We are getting more savvy at spotting these journals, but to the unsuspecting public consumer of research publications or to researchers who are early in their careers, one journal can look pretty much the same as the other. The victims of these scams are both the researcher and the audience.
Predatory journals exist because there is a lot of money to be made in scholarly publishing. Traditionally, academic and research institutions have paid subscriptions to scholarly journals, and until recently, this was the only option. These subscriptions pay for the journal to operate. Although nearly all journals now have a digital form and while most are transitioning to open access, paid subscriptions are still in place, which make journals money and lock out public access even to the digital copies.
If researchers want their publication to be available to those who don’t pay subscription fees, they themselves must pay the journal to provide open access. In the last 5 years, the US alone paid nearly $9 billion (US) on ensuring publications are open access. To publish one open access paper in Nature can cost up to £9,000. Researchers in Aotearoa spend on average anywhere between NZ $3000 and NZ $6000 for each publication to be open access. Predatory journals capitalise on the practice by implementing a pay-to-publish model, which effectively guarantees publication regardless of quality if you’ve paid. Meanwhile, all that open access entails for the publisher is to literally upload a PDF – the peer review process is done by other researchers for free.
As BA researchers, we strive to ensure that our work is accessible and transparent. We are committed to making it available to non-researcher. But researchers who want to do this find themselves eating away at diminishing funds to pay exorbitant open access fees. While Aotearoa New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s open research policy is designed to increase the impact and innovation potential of our public investments in research, there has been no increase in funds to cover such a policy. Which means we must make choices about what to make freely available and explore other alternatives to ensure we keep to our values—Te Pono – truth, honesty and integrity—as well as honouring the public who ultimately fund our work through their taxes.
Do we look to other forms of communication? Many of the National Science Challenges were moving towards different mechanisms of communicating their work, especially work that fell outside of the longstanding definition of research. These findings were shared through avenues like webinars, podcasts, public-facing web articles and posts on social media platforms.
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Research briefs developed by the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge
These weren’t the only groups to move towards other ways to communicate research findings using faster and less costly methods. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers had already begun to upload preprints, unreviewed manuscripts posted online, which exploded during pandemic. This was advantageous as researchers were able to access data and share findings with colleagues that eventually helped curb the disease. This became the best way to convey non peer reviewed results to people desperate for information.
This way of quick sharing did come with concerns. While many preprints are probably robust enough as a quick communications tool, most non-researchers don’t understand the key difference between a preprint and a journal article – preprints are unvetted by independent experts. They have not yet been peer-reviewed.
So how do these alternative forms of communication measure up? Are they as robust and likely to have impact as the traditional peer-reviewed publishing system? If impact and innovation are generated, does this impact translate beyond funding cycles? Answers to these questions have yet to emerge. In the meantime, all we can do as researchers is continuing to seek a balance between the need for accessibility and responsible information sharing. We must navigate our roles as credible and trustworthy sources of information against the constraints of budgets and time. For now, most of our communications will remain in peer reviewed journals (whether open access or subscribed users only) as this is still our best quality control check. But I am also eager to tentatively pursue other ways of sharing information, as innovations are sorely need in this information hungry, time poor and budget constrained environment.
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