open access - ecvp 2015
TRANSCRIPT
Routes to Open Access in Vision ScienceECVP 2015
Goal of this session- I want a low cost, high quality place to
publish... - We cannot solve all of the problems, but
there is potential to improve.- Conferences are potentially a good place to
make progress in how we do science- Example of the human genome project
Thanks To- Marco Bertamini and the ECVP organizers
- Nick Scott-Samuel, Alex Holcombe, Tom Wallis and many others who have contributed on Loomio.
What is the problem? ● Publishers continue to make excessive profits from an inefficient system.
This is money that could be funding PhDs, postdocs and research projects needlessly disappearing from science.
● Open Access offered a promising alternative, and has had some success, but it remains an expensive publication model.
Benefits of Open Access- Simpler, more efficient model.
- Author pays once- Research council / funder pays once
- Simplifies access (non-campus etc.)- Widens potential impact outside of science, particularly
important for non-university educations.- Wider audience within science. - Makes meta analysis and searches more efficient. - Transparent business model.
Existing costs (uninspiring)Journal of Vision £1185 (+ £320 CC BY fee) / €1700
PLoS One £864 / €1200
PLoS Biology £1855 / €2600
Vision Research £1247 / €1750
Current Biology £3199 / €4500
i-Perception £510 / €720 if formatted, £1020 if not*
Attention Perception and Psychophysics £1918 / €2700
Frontiers £1214 / €1700
Estimate of subscription cost £3112-6224 (see link) / €4400-8700
* i-Perception charges 35/70 per page, estimate based on 14 page average for full articles in last two issues
Update on i-Perception- Now published by Sage. New costs:
- £375 for a full article- £200 for a short report- £150 for Short and Sweet and Journal Club
- These are however temporary, and may rise when the journal is more established.
Success of Plos is informativeFrom Alex Holcombe
More inspiring alternatives
Ubiquity Press £300 / €375
PeerJ £63 per author (more to follow) / €99
Journal of Eye Movement Research Free*
Eye and Vision Free*
eLife Free*
There are already cheap routes to open access, which vision science could move towards.
What options are out there… PeerJPeerJ is a ‘mega journal’ akin to PLOS ONE, but with a radically different payment model:● £63 buys you one publication a year for life.● £126 two publications a year.● £199 for unlimited. ● The above payment must have been made for *all*
authors of a paper.To maintain your life membership you must make one “contribution” (review, comment) per year (see link).
PeerJ, journal options● “PeerJ Vision Sciences”
○ Unlikely due to the size of our field (“PeerJ Computer Science” serves a community of +100,000)
● PeerJ Collections ○ Essentially a special issue (see here for an example).
● PeerJ Subject Page○ A ‘journal within a journal’, subject to PeerJ’s normal
editorial standards. For an example see Psychiatry and Psychology.
PeerJ, editorial policyThe investigation must have been conducted rigorously and to a high
technical standard.Methods should be described with sufficient information to be reproducible
by another investigator.The data should be robust, statistically sound, and controlled.The data on which the conclusions are based must be provided or made
available in an acceptable discipline-specific repository.
Editorial board:● Academic Editors at PeerJ need to be at PI level, normally with >=25
publications
Innovations and other advantages● The peer review process can be open or closed as preferred by the
submitting authors (with reviews named or not as preferred by the reviewers.
● Open peer reviews receive a DOI so they can be cited directly. ● Institutional subscriptions could mean submissions are free for you
○ e.g. Bath, Bristol, Cambridge, Glasgow, Hull, Manchester, Reading, St Andrews, Stirling, Nottingham, Imperial.
● Ability to make comments and ask questions directly on the published manuscipt (e.g. see https://peerj.com/articles/119/#p-2).
PeerJ SummaryPros:●Very competitive pricing. Very professional
website. Large successful publisher.Cons:●Lack of editorial control, and lack of a clear
journal ‘identity’. Private company (no guarantee against Elsevier buy out, although founded by an Elsevier refugee and a former PLoS editor)
Ubiquity Press● The following slides are edited from those sent by Brian
Hole (CEO)
[email protected] www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Ubiquity Press
Brian Hole, Founder and CEO
Disrupting Academic Publishing
[email protected] www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
To return control of publishing to societies, universities and researchers, providing them with the infrastructure and support to not only match but to outcompete the legacy publishers.
About Ubiquity Press
Background
Mission
▪Spun out of University College London in 2012
▪Researcher-led
▪50+ years publishing experience (BioMed Central, PLoS, Elsevier, IoP)
▪Comprehensive approach: journals,
books, data, software, wetware…
[email protected] www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
[email protected] www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Research integrity
▪Full anti-plagiarism checking
▪Provision for open research data and software archiving with all publications
▪Editorial guidance and training ▪Provision for open peer review▪Committee On Publication Ethics membership for all editors
▪Rigorous peer review
▪Close links with university’s ethics committee
[email protected] www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
For any questions, please [email protected]
Ubiquity Press website: http://www.ubiquitypress.comKoh, A. 2012. Open Access Ahoy! An Interview with Ubiquity Press. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ubiquity/43312
More information
Ubiquity Press: innovations & benefits● Ubiquity Partner Network where each partner sits on the
steering board. Means the publisher is steered by the community that supports it (no Elsevier buy out!).
● Viable business model, already passed the ‘break even’ point after 3 years of operation.
● Has helped many societies transfer their journals, (for example the Belgian Association for Psychological Science).
Ubiquity PressPros● Successful business model with community steering,
professional website and support, full editorial control, uses traditional journal structure (papers not lost in a ‘mega journal’).
Cons● Arguably on the expensive side of new solutions.
DIY modelsOpen source software to set up a new journal (see Open Journal Systems)
-Journal of Eye Movement Research (JEMR)
-Eye and Vision
DIY models: JEMR● First volume published in 2007.● Entirely free for authors. ● Set up and managed by Chief Editor Rudolf Groner.
Estimated 1 day a week full time work. ● Moving to a host provided by the University of Bern (see
BOP - seems to be a more general move in Germany, for example see PsychOpen)
● Scope is obviously too limited for vision science as a whole, but illustrates viability of this approach.
DIY models: Eye and Vision ●First publication in October 2014.●Entirely free for authors. ●Funded by the Affliated Eye Hospital of
Wenzhou Medical University.●Articles focus on ophthalmology, but
includes vision science more broadly defined.
DIY models: Summary Pros●No APCs, full editorial control, increasingly
supported by large funding bodies.Cons●Rely on voluntary admin and support,
potentially only succeed with smaller communities of researchers.
eLife- Set up as an Open Access rival to Nature and Science
for biomedical and life sciences.- It was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust. - Consensus based peer review process.- Neuroscience section, with vision science editors
(Matteo Carandini and Judy Culham).- High Impact Factor (which they don’t promote...).
Should we care about impact factor?●Arguably an obstacle to innovation.●Potentially exploited by established journals.●Technically not to be used in the REF.●Inherently flawed metric (Brembs et al. 2013
)○Weak predictor of citations○Mean of skewed distribution○‘Negotiated’
But - because ppl still care… i-Perception 1.482
PeerJ 2.1 (preliminary)
Vision Research 2.4
Journal of Vision 2.39
PlosOne 3.24
AP&P 2.16
eLife 9.3
Current Biology 9.5
Incentive to accept- potential problem with OA model
- doesn’t have to be the case...
Potential discussion points: ●Should we care about impact factor?●What editorial standards do we want?●How should peer review work?
What editorial standards do we want?●Should we emphasize novelty?
Methodological rigour? Perceived importance?
●What kind of editorial board do we want?
How should peer review work?●Traditional 2/3 reviewer model?
●Collaborative model used by eLife?
●Interactive model used by Frontiers?
Votes 1●Would vision science benefit from a push
towards new lower-cost Open Access alternatives?
Votes 2●Which option is preferable?
○PeerJ? (subject page)○Ubiquity Press?○DIY (new journal)?○Support Eye and Vision?○Promote behavioural vision science within eLife
Continued DiscussionIf you want to contribute to discussing any of these options and ideas, please join us at: https://www.loomio.org/g/gblruSIx/open-science-in-vision-science