DROWNING IN A SEA OF REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

Abstract

PERSPECTIVE DROWNING IN A SEA OF REFEREED PUBLICATIONS The revolution in scientific publishing brought about by the Internet should be an opportunity to make the literature free and to raise standards CHRISTOPHER A. REED, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE A RE THERE TOO MANY JOURNALS, too many papers, even too many meetings these days? Most peo- ple seem to think so. There's a dilution effect. More is less. As referees, we are constantly being pressured to turn manuscripts around faster. Quality must be suffering. New jour- nals are appearing regularly while old ones die slowly Libraries can't afford them. Edi- tors are so overloaded that editorial input into the science is now very rare. Authors believe that they have to publish some- thing three times to get heard. The newest scientific unit, the LPU (least publishable unit), is being overused. Exaggeration of novelty and significance is common, and readers seem overwhelmed. Many scientists complain of being too busy to read the literature. This is not good. The importance and integrity of published work must remain paramount. HOW DID we get to this? Cer- tainly these days, with mod- ern instrumentation and more practitioners, we are produc- ing data at greatly accelerated rates. However, chemistry is no longer an infant science. Not all research requires full publication. The more pre- dictable a result, the less it needs to be published. The case can be made for elec- tronic archives for results that add to the storehouse of knowledge but contain insuf- ficient conceptual advance to warrant publication as a paper. Refereeing would still be required. From my observations, commercial publishers are driving the problem and have for a long time. Our learned HTTP://PUBS.ACS.ORG/CEN societies have tended to compete by fol- lowing along. With a quickness to start new journals, ego-directed invitations, and now (heaven forbid) unrefereed Web preprints (Elsevier's latest play to our all-too-human weaknesses), publishers feed into scien- tists' desires to get publicity and to extend their publication lists. We need counter- balancing inducements for restraint. We need quality, not quantity Much has been written about the cri- sis of access to knowledge as libraries are forced to cancel subscriptions ('A Ques- tion of Access, R. K.Johnson, http:// wwwdlib.org/dlib/may00/johnson/05john son.html). Solutions have been suggested ( Create Change, http://wwwarl.org/cre ate), but there is a tendency to skirt issues of our own culpability and the active roles we must take to remedy the problem. Via the Internet, a revolution in scientific pub- lishing is ongoing. We must take this opportunity to make the literature free and to lower the volume by raising standards. WHAT CAN be done? • Learned societies must take firm con- trol of the literature, minimize the profit motive, and be vigilant about maintaining standards. They have traditionally been better at this than commercial publishers. Let us declare that the market forces approach to managing journals is an inter- esting experiment, now out of control. It has failed because the customers essen- tially give away the product and have little incentive to exercise buying preferences. If the budgets for chemistry journals were in the hands of the chemistry departments rather than libraries, chemists would be motivated to do something. With significandy lower costs being real- ized by electronic publishing (the Ameri- can Chemical Society has done well by moving fast in this direction), learned soci- eties must move rapidly toward making their journals free, at least electronically After all, authors do all the work and get the paper in publication-quality format, only to give it away free of charge or even pay page charges to a publisher that turns around and charges others pay- for-view. Only refereeing, pro- vided free, and prestige are value-added. Editorial and pro- duction costs are large only for the print edition—now a luxury item and nearing obsolescence. I think it is a mistake for Chem- ical Abstracts to begin abstract- ing unrefereed Web preprints (C&EN, June 5,2000, page 15). We will soon be drowning in a sea of ««refereed papers. • Regarding copyright, one deliciously seditious thought keeps occurring to me: Why don't we all conspire to stop sign- ing away copyright? Are we that desperate to publish? Publish- ers should ask only for a Consent to Publish. Lawyers and profit- makers don't belong in the free knowledge business. • As authors, let us all pause before we write a paper and examine all of our motivations for publishing. How close do they match the ideals of the pro- C & E N / J A N U A R Y 2 9 , 2001