Judging publications by their business models holds back careers and open science, says John Porter
I can remember the struggle I had publishing my first academic paper, and how thrilled I was when it was finally accepted. I was lucky to be mentored through the process by an experienced professor; it was the first step to more than 200 publications.
Like most first papers, it did not appear in a ‘prestigious’ journal. But it did provide invaluable training in writing articles and navigating the publishing system.
One benefit of the open science movement and open access journals has been to broaden such opportunities. And this is one reason why a growing tendency to judge journals by their business model or publisher is a retrograde step. It will limit the professional, supportive routes to publish that every researcher needs, particularly at the start of their career. I have worked with many journals using different business models. In my experience, all business models have good journals and less good journals.
Review by rumour
Early this year, the publication forum run by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, known as JUFO, did consider publishers’ business models: it downgraded its rating of 271 journals from level 1, which covers the majority of peer-reviewed journals, to level 0—branding them “grey-area journals” that “aim to increase the number of publications with the minimum time spend for editorial work and quality assessment”.
All are open access: 187 are published by MDPI and 84 are from Frontiers—including Frontiers in Agronomy, of which I am the chief field editor.
No one would deny that there are justified concerns about the quality of peer review and prevalence of fraudulent papers in the scholarly literature. However, JUFO seems to have indiscriminately downgraded open access journals en masse, without relying on measurable criteria, such as Web of Science’s 28 requirements for indexation* or the 16-item questionnaire demanded by the Scopus database.
I can’t identify what facts led to the decision to downgrade my journal. Without this information, it is legitimate to wonder how much of the decision is based on evidence and how much is based on second-guessing, or prejudice, about the publishers’ motivations and practices. Also, it is impossible to address any supposed concern of the researcher community about my journal. For my part, I like to rely on facts and first-hand experience, so here’s the view from the ground.
No data left behind
The growth of open access journals has helped ensure that no valid papers or data are left behind. Researchers at the start of their careers get a chance to produce the best article possible if their paper is accepted and, if not, to learn through review. For editors like me, the value of a scientific publication encompasses these factors, regardless of its contribution to a journal’s impact factor.
Frontiers in Agronomy has exactly the same publishing systems—including integrity checks and peer review, archiving and indexing—as journals from the established, subscription-focused publishers that for a long time were the only game in town.
Beyond this, Frontiers has allowed me to do things that other publishers I have worked with did not offer. It has regularly run free webinars for early-career researchers working in agronomy about how to write scientific papers, with no expectation that they will publish in our journal. Another webinar brought together colleagues worldwide to discuss women in agronomy on International Women’s Day, launching a volunteer mentoring scheme.
This does not seem to me to be the behaviour of a take-the-money-and-run operation. It is why I signed an open letter protesting against the Jufo decision.
Invest in the future
If gold open access publishers are excluded from lists without transparent and clear criteria, an entirely valid publishing route will disappear. Such publishers often offer more competitive charges and flat-fee agreements than traditional publishers; without them, what incentives will other commercial publishers have to offer fairer deals and support for early-career researchers?
This is not to impugn the service offered by subscription journals or longer-established commercial publishers. As the lead writer of the chapter on food security in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report, along with contributions to many other IPCC publications, I and my colleagues relied heavily on traditional journals for our information.
I simply want to suggest that we need to cultivate future generations of scientific authors in a different way. No business can grow and survive without capital investment; in science, capital investment means fostering authors.
Judging journals by vibes and rumour threatens not just to cut off an open access publishing channel for early career researchers but to undermine specialised open science support for the underrepresented and emerging scientists who will be the authors of tomorrow.
John Porter is an emeritus professor in the department of plant and environmental sciences at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
*Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Clarivate, which is the provider of Web of Science.
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