The Open Access (OA) movement has been around since the 1990s – not surprising, as one of its principal tenets is that information should be freely available online. More specifically, it generally refers to scientific information, and in particular the information generally found in scientific journals.  As we all know, this information is generally not freely accessible: rather, it is usually kept for access by journal subscribers, whether they be individuals or institutions.

The debate over whether scientific research should be freely accessible or not is a heated one, with very little sign of a resolution either way anytime soon.  Its proponents say that freely available scientific research advances the cause and progression of science.  Its detractors says that without journals (most of which are subscription-based), there would be no peer-review process, and hence no quality control.  It’s not that simple, however.

Click here to listen to the related podcast – Embargoes in science reporting: Friend or foe?

Perhaps a good place to start is with the inevitable.  Michael Nielsen has written a very clear article on the matter, entitled ‘Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?’. In it, he argues very convincingly that scientific publishing (including journals) is about to experience the same upheaval that the newspaper/print industries have been experiencing.  At the hands of the same phenomenon: the internet. And, just like newspapers, there is relatively little that can be done about the situation.

One of the most important, and perhaps noticeable, agents of this change is scientific blogging: blogs written by scientists about their own and others’ work.

As Nielsen writes:

“Let’s look up close at one element of this flourishing ecosystem: the gradual rise of science blogs as a serious medium for research. It’s easy to miss the impact of blogs on research, because most science blogs focus on outreach. But more and more blogs contain high quality research content.”

They differ greatly from published articles in that they allow scientists to engage in an ongoing conversation about their work and its developments, and are also a valuable means of engaging other scientists in a conversation about their work.

The movement is catching on to such a degree that numerous highly respected scientists are blogging, including Terry Tao, Tim Gowers, and Richard Lipton (list supplied by Michael Nielsen).  On home ground, the New Zealand science blogging movement is also picking up pace: there are a number of blogs already in existence, and there are plans afoot to aggregate these bloggers’ work in a project called Sciblogs (based on ScienceBlogs).

“Scientific publishers should be terrified that some of the world’s best scientists, people at or near their research peak, people whose time is at a premium, are spending hundreds of hours each year creating original research content for their blogs, content that in many cases would be difficult or impossible to publish in a conventional journal. What we’re seeing here is a spectacular expansion in the range of the blog medium. By comparison, the journals are standing still.” (Nielsen)

A main feature of the Open Access movement, however, is not necessarily to dissuade scientists from publishing journals (more on that later), or to encourage them to write blogs.  Instead, it aims to encourage them to deposit copies of their published papers (pre or post-prints) in repositories which do give free access.  Of these, ArXiv is particularly prominent, and has a fantastic physics blog.

A recent issue of the Australian (OA) journal SCRIPTed looks at the issue in a paper entitled “Open Access to Journal Content as a Case Study in Unlocking IP’.  The paper examines the accessibility of reviewed, published papers from examples of the different types of science publishers, including PNAS, Elsevier and a major division of the US NRC.

Interestingly, the paper finds that the lack of access to published papers is not, as one might assume, solely the fault of publishers.  Instead, it found that the publishers’ copyright restrictions were (relatively) liberal, in many cases allowing researchers to place their work in repositories of one form or another.  The primary reason for the lack of forward momentum was due to the researchers themselves.  In the paper’s conclusion:

“The exploitation of the opportunity has lagged, because of impediments to adoption, especially the lack of any positive incentive to self-deposit, and downright apathy.  The outcomes to date are disappointing for proponents of OA and Unlocking IP…OA and Unlocking IP in the area of journal articles are at serious risk of being stillborn’.

No doubt, this last sentence is one which would thrill many journal publishers.  However, the OA movement and blogging are not the only movements which threaten journals.  These previous examples have opposed journals in a relatively passive way – they are (generally) quite happy to co-exist.

There is a far stronger movement which is lining up against journals.  This movement, written about in Times Higher Education’s recent article ‘A threat to scientific communication’ talks of growing unhappiness with publishing papers as the measure of a scientist’s success.  An increasing number of (well respected) scientists, including the former editor of the British Medical Journal, says the influence of being published in the ‘major’ journals is far too powerful, and that journal metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor are actually an impediment to scientific progress.

“”(Journal metrics) are the disease of our times,” says Sir John Sulston, chairman of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, and Nobel prizewinner in the physiology or medicine category in 2002.

“Sulston argues that the use of journal metrics is not only a flimsy guarantee of the best work (his prize-winning discovery was never published in a top journal), but he also believes that the system puts pressure on scientists to act in ways that adversely affect science – from claiming work is more novel than it actually is to over-hyping, over-interpreting and prematurely publishing it, splitting publications to get more credits and, in extreme situations, even committing fraud.”

A further comment:

“Noting that the medical journal articles that get the most citations are studies of randomised trials from rich countries, [Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet] speculates that if The Lancet published more work from Africa, its impact factor would go down.

“”The incentive for me is to cut off completely parts of the world that have the biggest health challenges … citations create a racist culture in journals’ decision-making and embody a system that is only about us (in the developed world).””

(Another problem cited is that the JIF, because it focuses only a few years, actually gives no indication of the long-term importance of scientific work.)

Embargoes are also coming under attack (see the recording at the bottom of this page), as it makes science seem more like an event than a linear series of incremental advances.  This reminds me quite a lot of Professor Sir Peter Gluckman’s recent comments on the NZ media: what he said very closely matches this criticism, in that he feels that the New Zealand media fails to show science as a gradual process, instead showing it as a series of leaps forward.  Which gave me cause to think: is it, then, actually the media’s fault?  Particularly here in New Zealand, where many journalists are not able to specialise in science issues, and thus gain an understanding of scientific research’s continuity?

But I digress.  In answer to the journals’ primary defense of their existence, the peer review process itself, there is also increased questioning of its use.  Journal publishers maintain that the peer review process is the only real means of quality assurance for scientific research.  The reactions to this include the following:

• That peer review itself is generally undertaken for free, meaning that journals are taking free work and, essentially, selling it back to scientists.
• The peer review process itself needs to have some of the following questions asked about: who actually does the reviewing?  How appropriate are they?  How strenuous is the process?  And, of course, timing is also an issue (the process can take months, greatly slowing the speed at which research becomes known about).
  • In fact, this latter point brings to mind the recent debate over a paper published recently by well-known climate change skeptics, which attributes over 70% of climate change to the El Nino/Southern Oscillation weather patterns.  While the paper was peer-reviewed, there have since been rebuttals (including this, yet-to-be-published paper) saying that the maths used was incorrect, and bringing into doubt the quality of the peer review undertaken on the original paper (I’m not commenting on either, please note).

Deep thought also has to be given to the tremendous amounts of research lost because it doesn’t come up with a result.  There are two types of experiments which have no end results (and I speak from personal experience here): they were poorly set up, performed or analysed, or there simply are no results to be had.

While the first group should absolutely be ignored, the second can be very important to scientists.  We used to say (in the market research consultancy at which I worked for a time) if our analysis turned up nothing that “it’s a learning in itself’.  And it often can be, either to prevent other scientists duplicating the same research (a huge waste of time and resources), or because there really is nothing there to see, which suggests that effort be focused in another direction.

The remedy for science publishing’s woes is unclear.  While everyone agrees that there is a problem, or at the very least a challenge, nobody is sure what shape the future of science publishing will take.

Michael Nielsen says that scientific publishers need to become technology-driven if they are to survive (he mentions Nature as one of the few publishers trying this), and that they must do so even if it means fundamentally changing the way they currently work.

“In ten to twenty years, scientific publishers will be technology companies. By this, I don’t just mean that they’ll be heavy users of technology, or employ a large IT staff. I mean they’ll be technology-driven companies in a similar way to, say, Google or Apple. That is, their foundation will be technological innovation, and most key decision-makers will be people with deep technological expertise. Those publishers that don’t become technology driven will die off.”

And while it seems that the peer review process is likely to stay, it will no doubt change in form.  It might well imitate what PLoS’s policy is, which is to check that the results can be substantiated by the methods and data, but not to worry about whether it is original or even important – this should be up to the world at large to decide.

Of course, something else to consider is this: if a paper is published in a repository or on a scientist’s own website/blog, and is then commented on by his peers…Is this not exactly what the peer review process is anyway?  In that case, why be concerned with publishing?

However one looks at it, the industry is in for a massive upheaval: while it is uncertain just how, we can be sure that those trying to innovate to stay ahead of it may survive, but those that stand still will, like their newspaper counterparts, face extinction.

Note: The Royal Society of New Zealand conducted some research in journal use/publication in 2004.  The results are here.

An SMC recording made at the World Conference of Science Journalists held in London in late June. The recording is of a debate held, the moot being “Embargoes in Science Reporting: Friend or foe). The recording is not complete – Vincent Kiernan’s comments are only partially recorded.

Vincent Kiernan's book Embargoed Science

Summary from the WCSJ website: Few issues provoke such impassioned debate as the issue of Embargoes in science reporting. Some science journalists are increasingly angry about what they see as ever more draconian sanctions on journalists for minor infringements of embargoes. Some others are angry that that science journals are wrongly labelling genuine scoops as embargo breaks and thus imposing unjustified sanctions. Science Press officers are angry that journalists complain about embargoes when the embargo is their property and one of the very few aspects of control they have over the story coming from their institution/journal. And now a leading US academic has written a book arguing that the entire system is having a corrupting influence on investigative and critical journalism and science journalists should collectively withdraw from the embargo agreements with journal publishers.

In the spirit of the WCSJ, Fiona Fox has brought together all sides of this lively and passionate debate to have no holds barred discussion of all the issues involved..wear a hard hat!

Speakers (in order):

1 Vincent Kiernan, Associate Dean, Georgetown University (against embargoes)

2 Geoff Watts, BBC Radio 4, science programme Leading Edge (for embargoes)

3 Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief, The Lancet (against embargoes)

4 John Davidson, Head of communications, UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (for embargoes)

Chaired by Fiona Fox, Director of the UK Science Media Centre

Click below to listen

You know that feeling – its gone 7pm in the newsroom and you’ve still to hear back from the two sources that are going to make your story worthy of page one or be spiked perhaps for ever. It’s that feeling of helplessness – no matter how fast you write, you’re at the mercy of other people to get your story finished.

The biggest single pressure on journalists has to be the time-constraints they are faced with in researching, writing and in the case of broadcast journalists shooting and editing, their stories.

Deadlines are great for producing results, there’s nothing like the feeling of nailing a story to deadline, then heading to the pub for a well deserved beer (mobile phone switched on in case the subs ring to fact check).

But the time frames in the world of new media are so truncated these days that turning around a well-researched, well-written story is often near-impossible.

Hence we get an increasing number of stories these days with quotes followed by “…she told the Associated Press”, or “according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia”. Journalists just don’t have the time to do all the primary research themselves and the media tie-ups and content sharing deals going on encourage them to lift content from sister-publications.

The news embargo as it applies to journalism is designed to help out harried reporters by giving them a heads-up on a news story before the development is officially unveiled to the world at large. In the case of science news, one of the most embargoed areas of news globally, it also gives scientists time to read newly published papers before the news goes public and sparks a firestorm of interest.

Embargoes typically aren’t too common in New Zealand outside of the political sphere. The annual Government Budget announcements are the main source of embargoed information, as well as the traditional Budget lock-up, which allows press gallery reporters and increasingly, bloggers and columnists, to sit in on a briefing of the main budget items and read the reports, while promising not to rush out and report anything until the budget speeches are complete.

Companies generally select a few key reporters to give news to under embargo such is the extent to which embargoes are broken these days. In fact, in the world of technology news, such is the competition to get the latest gadget or Google development on the web, that reporters are immediately breaking embargoes. That has led influential tech commentator Michael Arrington of Techcrunch to “declare death to the embargo”.

It’s a bit more difficult for science reporters. The major scientific and health journals such as Science, Nature, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal enforce strict embargoes and journalists who break them are often banned from receiving further information under embargo.

Embargoes from these big journals are often timed to suit media in the Northern Hemisphere and therefore aren’t very convenient to New Zealand media (an embargo on New Zealand research in Science last week was set to be lifted at 8am effectively prohibiting newspapers from publishing it that day). But when embargoes work, they work very well. Often the UK embargoes will be set at midnight so that around lunchtime our time, the wires are flooded with news stories from the major papers and broadcasters in London. A big hit of news on a subject puts it on the agenda and lends importance to the story.

But with such a large flow of embargoed information coming through all the time, is the embargo system making journalists lazy? The World Federation of Science Journalists seems to think so.

“Embargoes encourage lazy journalism. Whereas embargoes can give journalists the time to really investigate a story, all too often they actually take away the stimulus and the need to do “good, old-fashioned, investigative journalism,” writes Frank Nuijens in a blog post on the WFSJ website.

He points to the case of Paul Sutherland, a reporter writing for The Sun newspaper in Britain. Sutherland recently broke a major story about NASA on the front page of The Sun, the contents of which appeared to have come from an embargoed release issued to journalists by the science news aggregation service Eurekalert.

Suspecting Sutherland of breaking an embargo, the people at Eurekalert were understandably furious, ringing the paper to demand it be taken from the website and banning Sutherland from receiving future embargoed releases.

But it turns out that Sutherland’s story was down to his own research, not the information handed to other reporters on a plate by Eurekalert. He was able to prove such. Which makes you wonder about the majority of journalists who wait respectfully for embargo deadlines to pass – is this becoming such a way of life that the incentive to get out and dig up your own stories is receding?

I suspect there’s something to that. There’s another worrying trend towards scientific institutions packaging up content and handing it to media organisations to be reported largely verbatim. Granted, the scientific community deserves credit for learning how to develop content in a way that is going to see it getting a run in the media. But the long term potential impact for the state of science journalism is indeed worrying given the belt-tightening in the media in general.

So what’s to be done? Well, embargoes aren’t going away, everyone seems to agree on that. The alternative is chaos as journalists scramble to outdo each other when a story breaks or put pressure on contacts to leak information. That will do nothing for accuracy or balanced reporting.

A committee of journalists in Britain has been formed to look into the embargo issue in relation to science journalism and plans to have a draft report ready for the World Conference of Science Journalists in London in late June. The SMC will be at the conference and will report back on the findings of the committee.