Remembering Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley

I first knew Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley through his writings on the Useful Chemistry Blog; he wrote quite a bit about Open Notebook Science.  In fact, he coined the phrase.  I particularly remember reading a blog post concerning errors in the publishing of chemistry data.  He wrote a post on "Dangerous Data: Lessons from my Cheminfo Retrieval Class."  I used that blog post to help teach LIS students that a reference librarian needs to recommend that patrons use multiple sources to confirm reference data.  One can't trust any single source of information. 

I was able to invite Jean-Claude to speak at a session of the 2011 SLA Conference in Philadelphia.  He did a great job talking about errors in the chemical literature and his efforts in correcting those errors.

Jean-Claude was a strong advocate for the open exchange of scientific information (particularly the data from research notebooks), and he really helped advance the cause for open access and open data.  Text from the last slide of one of his 2011 SLA presentations is a good way to close.

For science to progress quickly there is great benefit in moving away from a “trusted source” model to one based on transparency and data provenance.  Open Notebook Science offers an efficient way to make research transparent and discoverable. 

Dr. Bradley, we will miss you.

The ACS and their prior publication policy for preprints #openaccess

I recently had an email conversation with someone from the ACS over some of their policies.  In particular, I noted their policy of not publishing articles that are online as preprints.  They consider those to be prior publication.

"A preprint will be considered as an electronic publication and, according to positions taken by most Editors of ACS journals, will not be considered for publication. If a submitted paper is later found to have been posted on a preprint server, it will be withdrawn from consideration by the journal."

I let them know that I was not happy with this statement because it has an effect on the research sharing behavior of researchers.  "This policy disallows chemists from using services like the arXiv, an institutional repository, or some other preprint server.  If this policy was modified, then more researchers would be able to share preprints with the world, and then science would speed up.

Will this archaic policy ever be reconsidered?"

The ACS representative noted that "As stated in the policy they view a preprint as a) unreviewed material and b) prior published material.  Hence it is not considered for publication: it is not an issue regarding open access etc. - more that we are not in the business of publishing secondhand news.”

I responded with:

"I agree that a preprint is unreviewed material, but I disagree that it is prior published material.  The author(s) should have a right to circulate their ideas and drafts to servers such as the arXiv.  The authors have the copyright to the early version of their manuscripts, and hopefully the ACS would change it up during peer review, during copy editing and in layout to make the article a different piece of work.  Physicists have been fine with this system for decades.  I would not call what the AIP, the APS, IOP Publishing, and Nature Physics are publishing as “secondhand news.”  Librarians and researchers know that the final published versions are different from the preprint versions.  That is why we keep on subscribing to AIP, APS, IOP, NPG, and Elsevier journals. 

It is this conservative policy of considering a preprint to be prior published material that is keeping chemists from posting these earlier drafts to institutional repositories or to a chemistry preprint server.  This policy is helping to keep chemists stuck in the mud when it comes to Open Access."

Is the ACS afraid that researchers will unsubscribe because a fraction of the research is scattered online as preprints?  Maybe they are afraid that researchers won't see that the ACS adds enough value to the articles?  Then, people can compare a preprint with what the ACS has published.  

On the need for social change in the #openaccess and scholarly communication system

I have written a little bit in the past about how the culture of information sharing and dissemination is different from one discipline or field of research to the next.

Barbara Fister recently wrote in Inside Higher Ed about how we need more than just technological change to create greater access [Open Access] to scholarship, we need to create a culture where scholars are encouraged to share their research using Open Access methods. This is true for those in the sciences, the social sciences and in the humanities. She noted:

Much harder is changing the cultural practices that surround publishing, the ones that assign value to certain prestigious journals and university presses, and then assign value to scholars by proxy, relying on publishers to curate our faculties (a task university presses didn’t sign on for, I should add).

Of course, researchers and faculty are concerned with the perceived prestige of the sources they publish in.  Harvard is trying to convince the faculty that they should move the prestige to Open Access. But, that tactic may not work at all institutions and fields.  Some fields like chemistry have strong ties to industry, and there is some reluctance for many chemists to share their knowledge widely (for financial reasons, patent reasons, etc.).  [See page 20 of this PDF report.]  Some in the humanities may have concerns with others sharing (tweeting, blogging, etc.) their work that the author thinks is inappropriate.  However, most scientists would be happy to know that their work is being discussed in non-traditional scholarly channels.

The policies of tenure and promotion committees vary from institution to institution, and from department to department.  If we are going to truly promote greater access to research and the literature (and data and everything else), we (OA advocates) need to provide greater incentives for the researchers with different tenure and promotion policies.  This starts with the premise that Open Access is the default mode of scholarship (PDF), and that if they want to hide their research in a closed toll-access journal (or a journal that does not allow for green OA versions, or in a low-circulation book), then they will need to jump through hoops to submit articles/chapters to such journals and books.

This opinion piece in Aljazeera also noted the culture of some academics to hide their research from the rest of the world, because some researchers want to only share their research with a small set of other researchers through toll-access journals or books--to only those with the correct keys to that set of knowledge. Sarah Kendzior wrote:

Academic publishing is structured on exclusivity. Originally, this exclusivity had to do with competition within journals. Acceptance rates at top journals are low, in some disciplines under 5 per cent, and publishing in prestigious venues was once an indication of one’s value as a scholar.

Today, it all but ensures that your writing will go unread. "The more difficult it is to get an article into a journal, the higher the perceived value of having done so," notes Katheen Fitzpatrick, the Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association. "But this sense of prestige too easily shades over into a sense that the more exclusively a publication is distributed, the higher its value."

When we convince tenure and promotion committees of the value of sharing research through Open Access channels, and that OA has more benefit to the institution (and the department and the individual) than hiding the research in supposedly prestigious toll-access sources, then the value of OA will go up as more and more t&p committees and funders demand it.

Scholars--Don't give away your work for free: Synthesizing many scholarly communication issues tonight

It seems like scholars and researchers are finally starting to get the point that they shouldn't be giving away their work for free to commercial publishers who then sell back that content to libraries, at often-times huge profits.  Libraries do not exist to make sure that commercial publishers can rake in huge amounts of cash for their stakeholders.

This even holds true for non-profit societies such as the American Chemical Society who act as if they are a commercial outfit.  See this Chronicle article (temporary full text access) and Jenica's posts about them on her blog and in CHMNINF.  Other bullies have also been recently outed.  [Edited to add: The ACS is scared of the new information environment (including social networking sites such as blogs and Twitter (and discussion lists?) where they can't control all of the terms and the language of librarians.  They respond with fear, uncertainty and doubt to attack librarians who dare question their position.]

In other Open Access news, the SCOAP3 deal seems to be moving along. 

I just finished reading Peter Suber's book on Open Access.  Thankfully, John wrote a great overview of the book similar to what I was going to say.  In the next day or seven, I will try to compare and contrast Suber's OA book with Walt Crawford's OA book.  As John notes, they are complementary, and do not compete for the same audience.  Both are very worthwhile reads.

[Another edit: I forgot to mention all of the stuff going on around the American Historical Association.  Fun reading.  Especially the post from Barbara.]

Good night. 

New version of the Periodic Table

This MIT Technology Review blog post explains how a new graphical presentation of the periodic table of chemical elements was developed. For more background, take a look at the PDF of the research behind the idea.