Editorial

1. Introduction

It seems that the constantly changing world of scientific publishing is as high in the public consciousness as it has ever been. There is far more reporting of new breakthroughs, such as the latest largest dinosaur or the smallest subatomic particle, than there was say 20 to 30 years ago. Furthermore, the journals from which these news stories emanate always receive a prominent mention. This of course is an entirely positive phenomenon. The unfortunate ying to this yang is that publishing in science has recently garnered some adverse publicity. Furthermore, the rise of open access publishing is causing paradigm shifts in this important and lucrative industry. This editorial seeks to review some aspects of the aforementioned hostile press, to describe efforts by academic libraries to strike different deals with the major scientific publishers, to offer some thoughts on open access publishing, and to assess any implications generally and specifically for this journal. In particular I wish to stress here that membership of AASP – The Palynological Society, a not-for-profit organisation, is a genuine bargain. Being in this association offers the palynologist many benefits, including unlimited online access to the current issue and all past volumes of Palynology (and Geoscience and Man) published since 1970, plus all the articles which are in press at the time.

2. Science publishing in the news

The prominent UK broadsheet newspaper, The Guardian issued a long piece on the business model of academic publishing and its evolution which was last revised in July 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science). This extended and well-researched piece described the economics of the scientific publishing industry, which is worth over £19 billion in total global revenues. Academic libraries throughout the world pay an incredible ∼£15.6 billion in annual subscription fees. This means that academia pays commercial publishers between £3400 and £4500 for every paper they publish according to some estimates. Some of the principal publishing houses are huge multinationals who make massive surpluses. Profit margins of 36% were mentioned; these are staggeringly high and substantially eclipse the profit levels of well-known brands such Amazon and Google. Compare the figure of 36% to regular magazines, such as Newsweek, which typically operate on surpluses of 10% to 15%. The reason for the large profit margins is in part the fact that scientific journals get many of their raw materials free, and typically have the manuscripts reviewed and scientifically edited at no charge by peer reviewers and volunteer editors. However, to get a balanced view on the somewhat contentious topic of paying authors and reviewers see https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/05/25/what-if-academic-and-scholarly-publishers-paid-research-authors/.

A cynic may suggest that, at face value, all the publishers have to do is copyedit and produce the papers, print them and distribute the journals. However, it should be borne in mind that there are substantial costs in creating and maintaining electronic submission websites to enable peer review, as well as the global distribution of print copies. With the majority of research papers now read on the internet, online distribution is also no small undertaking. There are many other hidden costs and responsibilities borne by the publishers. These include: creating, developing and maintaining websites; ensuring discoverability such that papers are easily found in Google Scholar and other search engines; producing html/pdf versions of articles; reference linking between articles; and storing metadata. Furthermore, publishers all support CrossRef/ORCID and many other cross-industry initiatives which make online publishing work behind the scenes. Furthermore, publishers who produce a journal on behalf of a society pay that association royalties on the monies earned. Corporate bodies, in theory at least, should pay taxes. This is in contrast to charities such as the printing houses run by some elite universities whose surpluses go into the coffers of institutions who, perhaps inadvertently, may perpetuate exclusivity in education and research. Another apparent irony in academic publishing is that government grants fund much of the research which gets disseminated. Then, in the case of subscription journals, federally-funded university libraries buy the results back! Little wonder that this modus operandus has been likened by some to a license to print money.

Also, in the summer of 2017 (1^st July 2017), The Times published a prominent news article entitled Academics strike back against bad science, together with a leading article in the same edition of the newspaper. The article is a well-researched piece, describing a campaign called Bullied into Bad Science or BIBS (http://bulliedintobadscience.org/). Simply put, a group of early career researchers and a senior academic at the University of Cambridge in England are seeking to promote timely, high-quality research articles in ethical open access only journals. The basic tenet is that the modern scientific world is driven solely on metrics such as H-indices and impact factors, and the slavish adherence to these measurements is skewing science itself. The main claim of BIBS is that junior researchers are frequently ordered to produce sexy, high-impact papers even if this means writing exaggerated, rushed or even downright false results and interpretations. A prominent ally of BIBS asserted that the current journal model is “an archaic Victorian scientific process that ….. is not fit for purpose.” He went on to state that the status quo is “geared up to newsworthy new discoveries ….. unnecessarily incentivised by the publication process.”

The fact that the number of scientific articles which have been retracted has increased massively since 1975 was used to support the main contentions of BIBS (Fang et al. 2012). Moreover, in early 2017, The Guardian ran a story about software checking the statistics in psychology papers and finding relatively small, but extremely worrying, levels of ‘scientific misconduct’ (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/01/high-tech-war-on-science). However, this phenomenon may not be solely due to scientific sharp practice. The numbers of scientific articles published has risen exponentially in recent decades (Jinha 2010, fig. 2; Larsen & von Ins 2010; http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/05/global-scientific-output-doubles-every-nine-years.html). Furthermore the automated technology used to identify the sorts of issues such as plagiarism which trigger retractions is more effective and widespread. Prior to the advent of this anti-plagiarism software, the identification of potential malpractice was a manual process based on feedback from reviewers or readers.

BIBS contends that the overwhelming imperative to get articles accepted by journals with H-indices of 35–40, means that corners are cut and the data/interpretations ‘sexed-up’. The organisation maintains that the fault for this lies with both authors and editors, and gives examples where bad practice has occurred. However, this trend may be in large part due to pressure to demonstrate impact and the justification of research funds exerted on academics by their institutions in response to initiatives such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) for assessing the quality of research in UK universities (http://www.ref.ac.uk/). Whatever the root cause of the temptation to allow perceived scientific standards to slip, an example was cited of a scientist from the USA who has been barred from receiving federal research funding for five years for manipulating key images which appeared in high-profile journals. BIBS was also reported on in other periodicals. The unethical ‘doctoring’ of digital images in scientific articles was recently highlighted by Nature (2017). Apparently 20% of articles on life sciences include at least one manipulated image. A prominent German cell biologist has been banned from receiving research grants for three years for altering graphics files.

3. The open access revolution

During literature searches, how great is it when the paper you are looking for can be easily and freely downloaded without coming up against a pesky paywall? In today's febrile, metric-driven, world this is good for both the reader and the author. In the case of the latter, open access (OA) articles are obviously going to attract significantly more downloads than ones hidden from non-subscribers. Whether these downloads translate into more cites is, at present, an open question; the evidence for this seems to be anecdotal at this stage. Any indications of this may be skewed because institutions naturally prefer to fund OA for their best (i.e. most impactful, and hence citable) papers. OA comprises online research outputs that are devoid of any restrictions to access, and that, depending on the specific license type, lack many restrictions as to their use. The relatively recent OA model is where the author pays for the production costs as article processing charges (APCs). The costs of APCs vary significantly, and may attain several thousand pounds. Typically, OA journals such as PLoS ONE are online only and, upon publication, the content is freely available to all. The vast majority of conventional journals offer authors the opportunity to make their papers open access. Electronic publication is by now so mainstream that new biological taxa do not have to appear on paper to be valid any more.

Clearly, OA is a step change in academic publishing and it is literally turning the established old ‘reader-pays’ model on its head, moving it to ‘author pays’. If OA becomes the prevailing mode of disseminating science, institutional libraries will no longer be beholden to paying subscriptions to the large corporate empires and should therefore be able to fund APCs for their staff. Obviously, it is an entirely good thing that scientific results and interpretations are freely available to all. Governments clearly agree, and papers produced from many federal agencies are now mandated to be OA. Many research grants now include an allocation for APCs. Major players such as the Geological Society of America (GSA) are committed to moving all their journals (such as Geology) to an OA-only model in the future. The Journal of Micropalaeontology is the first micropalaeontological journal to move to obligate OA (https://www.journal-of-micropalaeontology.net/).

Of course, there are always unintended consequences in revolutions such as these. Not all scientists have access to institutional funds to pay APCs. The principal example of this would be scientists working in developing nations. Another potentially deserving case is the amateur or retired scientist who diligently beavers away at his or her pet projects and writes them up with no friendly university library to pay APCs. Independent consultants may well be in the same boat here. Happily, most funding bodies, institutions, publishers and societies operate APC waiver systems to assist the most deserving authors (e.g. https://www.plos.org/fee-assistance#loc-fee-assistance-programs).

4. A new open access deal?

In section 2, the modus operandus of the scientific publishing industry was discussed. Currently, there are ongoing discussions which could have far reaching consequences for the business of the dissemination of academic work (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/bold-open-access-push-germany-could-change-future-academic-publishing). Over 150 institutions in Germany, called Projekt DEAL, have united to attempt to persuade academic publishers to accept an annual lump sum to pay the APCs of all papers with a first author who is German (https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/). Additionally, this proposal would include access by the German institutions to all the publisher's online content and make all contracts public. The formula is the number of papers with first authors at German institutions multiplied by an agreed fee per paper to each company. This should come to a lower total than is currently spent, assuming the multiplier sought by the German academics (£1200 to £1800) is agreed. This proposed new contract will make German research more accessible while simultaneously reducing costs. It has been termed a ‘publish and read’ deal. Institutional consortia elsewhere (e.g. Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Peru, Taiwan and the UK) have attempted, or are attempting, to broker similar deals.

The German academic consortium has had some notable success (https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/max-planck-oa-agreement/). However, currently, the negotiations between Elsevier, a huge publishing company based in the Netherlands, and Projekt DEAL are at an impasse. If agreement is not reached, the members of Projekt DEAL have said that journal subscriptions will not be renewed until an accommodation is reached. Moreover, several Elsevier journal editors who are German have resigned. Projekt DEAL are dogged in the pursuit of their preferred model across the board, which they believe will cause a massive boost to open access publishing globally, and they have stated that they will be patient in this resolve.

5. The implications for Palynology

What has all this to do with the readers of Palynology? Firstly, I can assure all users that all our papers are accepted on the sole basis of scientific merit. This is a specialist journal and, as such, is extremely unlikely to attract submissions which are overblown or ‘sexed-up’. I am far more concerned about doing a fair job as an editor than attempting to inflate the impact factor. If a reviewer told me that a manuscript has substantial scientific merit but is unlikely to be cited heavily (it occasionally happens), I will accept the paper in a heartbeat. I also feel that it is unlikely that any image we publish have been manipulated in an unethical manner. The digital cleaning up of backgrounds on photomicrographs is a matter for personal preference, and was discussed by Riding & Head (2017).

The OA issue is an interesting one. Palynology is hybrid OA, i.e. it is mainly subscription but does have OA options for authors who choose to publish this in way, or need to comply with grant funding regulations. Consequently, quite a few authors of papers in Palynology have paid for their work to be freely available. Speaking as both an editor and a palynologist, I am very supportive of OA. However the current setup we have is that non-OA papers in Palynology (i.e. the majority) are behind a paywall, and authors get the service free. Despite this, I would point out that, in my view, palynologists everywhere in the world ought really to be members of AASP – The Palynological Society. We are an active, international and vibrant society which seeks to promulgate, represent and support the subject, and to bring practitioners together. Our subscriptions are extremely modest, for example annual dues for students with online access are currently only US$30 per year! All paid-up members have online access to the current and all legacy volumes of the journal. Hence, effectively, Palynology can be viewed as being totally free access to palynologists. Certainly this is the case throughout the developed world. There is a persuasive case for AASP – The Palynological Society to offer special society membership deals for scientists working in developing nations, and I hope that this issue will be addressed soon. However, this situation is already mitigated by the Research4Life initiative which that provides developing countries with free or low cost access to academic papers online (http://www.research4life.org/about/; http://www.research4life.org/eligibility/).

My colleagues Matthew Cannon and Steven U. Vidovic at Taylor & Francis are thanked for their very helpful comments on initial drafts of this article.