From impact factors to impact craters

This was originally posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=542

Day 2 in the Big Brother house (aka the European Geosciences Union General Meeting). There’s no where near enough beer, and tensions are getting high. A horde of angry horses have invaded the lower levels, and taken the President of Austria hostage, with demands of lowering the Fair Straw Tax.

But throughout all the acid-fuelled hysteria, two events have stuck out so far today. The first was a workshop discussion on open access publishing for early career researchers (ECRs), hosted by a new Editor for the EGU’s publishing house, Copernicus. Unfortunately, this event confirmed a lot of the current issues with the development of open access policies globally, in that there has been a serious communications breakdown about the effects the policy transitions, particularly in the UK now that Research Councils UK’s (RCUK) open access policy has come into play (April 1st), will have on how and where ECRs can publish. Here are comments on several of the more prevalent points raised:

The crux of the matter – language, context, and narrative

Throughout this series, I have highlighted the pitfalls and issues associated with effective communication of scientific knowledge to and with the public. This has largely been fueled by a recent paper highlighting these points as stepping stones and hurdles which scientists face and can develop upon to create strategies for becoming better at public communication. However, I’ve yet to offer any kind of solution.

Yesterday, I wrote briefly about the way in which geoscientists can use different plots to help them reconstruct scientific information into a digestible narrative format, taking on the style of a refashioned ‘story’. Continuing to draw upon the analysis by Iain Stewart and Ted Nield, this post will focus on how developing a narrative and particular language can help researchers to ‘talk geoscience’ in a more engaging manner.

To reiterate the actual issue, I’m going to steal a quote from the Stewart and Nield paper citing the geoscientist and science writer Rex Buchanan (it’s like he was made to be a geoscientist with a name like that..):

“We do a mediocre job of helping adults to learn about and appreciate science. Many of the science stories that I read in newspapers or try to watch on television aren’t very engaging. Some are too long, and many seem irrelevant. Popular science often seems like castor oil – some we should take because it’s good for us, not because we want too” (2005)

An Open Analogy

There is something of a revolution occurring. Hailed as the ‘Academic Spring’, it refers to the movement of academics and publishers alike to ‘open access’ models of scholarly publication. The actual history and details of it are complex, and summarised greatly elsewhere (see below), but the gist of it revolves around the fact that academic publishers have effectively employed an immoral and financially unfeasible business model for too long, by erecting barriers (or ‘paywalls’) around taxpayer-funded research. It’s not my wish here to discuss the past, present or future of academic publishing here, but to provide an analogy that highlights just how fucked broke most current publication schemes are.

The idea for this post stemmed from a recent discussion with a couple of mates currently in the British armed forces. One works for the Intelligence Corps as a language specialist, and he told us their motto:

“Knowledge gives strength to the arm”

Manui Dat Cognitio Vires

This is a pretty cool motto, and sparked the idea of a possible analogy between the models of intelligence distribution within the armed forces, and knowledge distribution within academia, and the public domain. Here’s an attempt at (simply) describing that analogy:

In academia, information is gathered by researchers, whose salaries and grants are, for the most part, funded by the public. This information is peer-reviewed by scientists (for no expense) and formatted, typically taking an average of 12 months per article (at least in the field of Palaeontology). Information is then published online and/or as paper copies, where publishers typically charge for access, unless a standard of ‘open access’ is employed (e.g., the author pays a previously arranged fee to make the work publicly available for free). The system is slow, reliable, and inefficient.

In the army, troops and machines gather intelligence either through direct or indirect means. Information is promptly relayed through appropriate command hierarchy. Speed is critical. Command redirects filtered information to appropriate units, and the information is beneficial. The system works. It’s fast, reliable, and efficient.

But..

If somewhere in the hierarchy of army command, someone decides to put up a barrier where subordinate ranks are required to pay for information. The system breaks down, becoming inefficient, immoral, ineffective, illogical and discordant with an ideal and faultless working system.

The system works through fast, efficient and open communication of data/information, with open ‘peer review’ provided by intelligence analysts. Almost every stage of the army intelligence system has an analogous representative in academia. The intelligence corps are the academic researchers; the command line represents institutions, libraries, and also scientists as peers and editors. ‘Publishers’ exist, as those who operate the communication machinery, but the associated paywalls are not present.

In the intelligence corps ‘model’, everyone benefits, as the system works. In the academic model, the only beneficiaries are selectively, and unnecessarily, those who can afford to obtain information, and of course the [regressive] commercial publishers.

This is by no means a detailed analysis of how two intrinsically complex systems work. The simplification serves the analogy, in that it exhibits how the paywall component of the current model forces it to be inefficient. As a scientist*, I find the idea of paywalls immoral as knowledge should be freely available to all, and also ironic that those who openly declare their target to be the distribution and access of scientific material are the ones causing the system to break down. I don’t object to a company trying to make a profit (I believe this is called ‘Business’), but there are better ways that a) don’t piss off pretty much your entire ‘work force’, and b) are logical in terms of taking a stance on increasing the global pot of knowledge. That’s a pretty noble stance to have.

“Knowledge gives strength to all”

Scientia dat vires ad omnes

 

 

 

*I’m starting my PhD in September this year

Additional, and recent, reading on the ‘Academic Spring’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/01/open-free-access-academic-research?CMP=twt_gu – The Guardian

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2012/04/openaccess.aspx – JISC

http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1058 -Blog by Michael Eisen

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/the-future-of-science/ – Article by Richard Price

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/harvard-vs-yale-open-access-publishing-edition/256468/#.T5rn8hNmPwA.twitter – The Atlantic

http://svpow.com/2012/04/20/how-elsevier-can-save-itself-part-0-introduction/ – Series of blogs by Mike Taylor

A glitch in the [publishing] matrix?

Cretaceous Research is a journal published by the notorious for-profit publisher Elsevier (see articles on this blog). Tonight however, they have blessed us with a wealth of new research through their RSS feed (albeit, paywalled for the 99%), a lot including everyone’s favourite vertebrates, the dinosaurs. This is an inordinate amount of publications for K-Research (there were about 50 in total, and the same for Palaeo-3, also published through Lolsevier).

Could this be a glitch in the system? A way of attempting to appease those who most strongly oppose Elsevier’s business model? (Mike Taylor of SV-POW (amongst others) has been one of the strongest and most vocal opposers against Elsevier, and is a bona fide vertebrate palaeontologist [by day..]). A mystery indeed. Or, it could just be a chance to absorb some great palaeontology research!

Neo, the manifestation of Open Access

Either way, the latest published through Cretaceous Research includes: Alvarezsaurids and eggs from Patagonia, ceratopsids from Canada, marine reptiles from Chile, arthritis in birds, the world’s largest toothed pterosaur, another pterosaur from China, a Spanish sauropod, a new pliosaur from Utah, a new avian ichnotaxon, another Sauropod from Patagonia, a new ornithopod, and a tyrannosaurid from Uzbekistan! Wow. There’s more, including frogs, beetles, lizards, and rocks, but you can find them hanging around these bad boys.

Edit: Looking at the journals, it appears that what Elsevier have done is mistakenly allow access to both April and June’s editions through advanced online publication. Cheers!

Obviously *none* of these paywalled papers are available upon request.. (jon.tennant.2[at]gmail.com )