No barriers for science, please
“NPG itself has different models in which we publish therelevant academic content,” Wilde explains the role theacademic publisher has given itself in the discussion around openaccess. While some journals, like PLoS ONE and its SURF
“I believe that an industry that has a mixture of differentbusiness models is the future. Probably we will not see a scenariodeveloping with everything done through open access or everythingonly available by subscriptions.”
Why do people use different brands of cars?
“Nature itself for example still doesn’t have an open accessoption. Open access works if it’s for a broad audience, if thetitle itself is a big megajournal for instance. Nature has onaverage around 400.000 readers for print and almost 2 milliononline per month, but we publish on average 15 articles a week.These articles are selected from publications coming from around1000 authors. 95% of the content proposed to us is rejected forpublication.”
To explain this differentiation in publishing models, Wilde usesthe example of the car industry. “Why do people use differentbrands of cars? That drives their decision making on what car topurchase and what not in different circumstances. For scientiststhere are also different motives. You want to get published assimple as possible, or to be published because it helps your careera lot. Those motives or reasons lead to very differentoutcomes”
Jason Wilde (foto: Monique Kooijmans)
“NPG has always worked with scientists, so we know their demandsand motives. You have to consider as well the revenue-model whichis most appropriate in an publication. Do you charge the author orthe reader? There are different models to look at, differentstreams of revenue to consider which is best in which situation.Our idea is to spread costs over many different types of revenue.If there are many more authors to readers it makes sense to spreadthe cost over the authors and if there are many more readers toauthors then it makes sense to charge the readers, for instancethrough subscriptions.”
Wilde believes – in contrast to PLoS ONE-editor Neylon – openaccess will remain one of the models available for publishing. “Idon’t think only one model will become totally dominant. It will bethe scientists who drive that development, not publishers. PloS hasshown that their business model is working, but there are stillpeople who want to protect their work, want to have control over itto protect the ownership of their work.”
China the next logical step
The petition against the recent legislation such as SOPA and theRWA therefore get the support of NPG. Onprinciple primarily. “We are opposed such legislation. Thereshouldn’t be barriers in the communication of science. Thoselegislations go against everything science stands for.”
In the world of scientific publishing things have not onlychanged when you consider publishing models. The scientific worldalso witnesses a geographical shift. “China is the place ofsignificant interest to every publisher. In the 90’s we opened aneditorial center in Tokyo. By then we had two editors, now it’shundred. China is the next logical step for us.”
Problems in language proficiency are a reality, but not apermanent barrier, Wilde notes. “The language of science isEnglish, also in China. We do however provide a digest, orabstract, in local languages if needed. Texts written in terriblelanguage are a hindrance, but this is not a matter in considering’do we publish or not’. If in manuscripts, the language is aproblem, NPG editors will help as much as they can to improve thelanguage.”
As well as China, the rest of the BRIC-countries does attract alot of attention to NPG. India and Brasil are becoming majornations in educations and science. But Wilde points out inparticular to the development in Russia. “The situation there ischanging significantly. While it was focused on really hardcorescience in the Soviet era, it underwent a collapse afterwards. Wenow see a big shift. Russia is starting to rebuild itsinfrastructure in science and is making a remarkable comeback.”
Within these BRIC-countries, Wilde notes a growing popularity ofa concentration on applied sciences as this is easier for somegrowing economies. The focus on ‘hard science’ had diminished andthis raises some fundamental questions. “There is a growingeconomic point of view when looking at the value of doing science.That poses an important question: if all nations want to ‘score’ byapplied activities who will be doing the fundamental research?Because we do need this: if you rule out doing the fundamentalstuff, you will never get far in being successful in innovation andapplied science. Even if there is no immediate application orcommercialization of the scientific research as such.”
Thematic journals over disciplinaryjournals
The urge for applied sciences can also be seen in the amount andtype of academic journals being published by NPG. “If you look atNPG itself, for example in the multidisciplinary area of chemicalbiology, you see a very encouraging development. When thisjournal was launched it brought three primary research manuscriptsa month. So it was a very small area of science, but we could seethis that was an field which was gathering momentum.”
“Today this area has grown significantly and the journal ispublishing ten manuscripts a month. So it has become clear that weidentified an important area of scientific research and have , overthe last seven years, worked with the community to build animportant journal. You have to keep asking yourself and scientistswhether we do serve the needs of all issues of research and sciencethis way.”
Within this development of more interdisciplinary journalsinstead of more specific disciplinary publications Wilde witnessesa shift to publications with a thematic focus. “Climate change forexample is a subject that goes beyond disciplines. We want to getthe scientists together and new journals and types of publicationcan serve this.”
According to Jason Wilde this development of very complex,interdisciplinary approaches points to another significant shift inscience. The question “what is the data behind this?” in thoseareas of research is becoming more important in order to bring thediffering scientific traditions and analysis together.
How to respond to fraud?
Cameron Neylon addressed this development as well in his opening
Openness on data has another important aspect: the fight againstscientific fraud. In Dutch science this issue has become painfullytopical recently. Wilde however warns against overestimating themagnitude of this problem. “Access to data might be a solution tosee if there are doubts or even fraud.”
NPG-editors already use different ‘instruments’ to check whetherscientists are trustworthy in their work. “If we believe somethingis not valid, is wrong even, you can raise questions and addressthe worrying elements. When this leads to uncovering really falseaspects in a research of publication a paper will be have to bewithdrawn. But we have concluded that not that many papers arewithdrawn. It is such a small amount. Cases of fraud are rare sothe current system does work very well and has been shown to workwell for many, many years.”
