Letters to the Editor
-
Thank you
I also reported this issue on my blog in Chinese.
But I care more about when will have Chinese OA platform.
I learned a lot
Thank you all
-
NIH funding uncorrelated with scientific productivity
NIH funding doubled over a short period of time (1999-2003) and I looked for the corresponding increase in scientific productivity. The simplest metric is the number of scientific publications. A natural control is the number of publications in other scientific fields where the budget did not double. The total number of publications cited in PUBMED shows a 7% annual increase between 1999 and 2005 (Table 1). The ISI database for in biology yielded an increase of 13%. In contrast, chemistry, without a budgeti doubling, increased 7%. Key words for different areas such as “DNA” and “Neuron” produced similar results. The annual increases reflect primarily increased coverage of journals by the databases.
PUBMED "Biology", ISI "DNA", ISI "Neuron"
7%, 13%, 0%,
ISI "Physics", ISI "Chemistry", ISI "Arts and Humanities"
3%, 7%, -2%,
Table 1. Increase in the number of publications/year for different databases and search terms before (1996-1999) and after the budget doubling (1999-2005).
As another control, I compared productivity in US biology labs to that of other counties(Table 2). Doubling the NIH budget had little effect. Only China showed a significant increase in scientific productivity over that period.
ISI: kw=neuron, USA, Japan, Germany, China, UK
1996-1999 2.9%, 7.6%, 12.3%, 42.7%, 1.2%,
1999-2005 3.6% 1.2% -1.4% 38.9% 1.4%,
ISI: kw=DNA
1996-1999, 0.00%, -0.01%, 0.01%, 0.22%, 0.01%,
1999-2005, 1.55%, 0.26%, 5.43%, 39.49%, 0.22%
Table 2. The annual increase in publications from labs in five different countries for the indicated key words before (1996-1999) and after the budget doubling (1999-2005).
Perhaps the articles are now twice as good as they were in 1999. but an anecdotal sampling of scientists suggests otherwise.
The lack of correlation between NIH funding and scientific productivity is surprising. To lobby Congress to provide more money for the NIH, we need evidence that more money means more productivity. I encourage the NIH to supply this data.
-
Publishers are not all the same!!
It is very important to distinguish between society and commercial publishers. Society publishers, by and large, publish both the less expensive and the more cited journals.
Commercial publishers are at the root of the problem, having largely destroyed the author-page-charge/low-subscription publishing model, prevelant until recently, by introducing their no-page-charge/high-subscription publishing model.
-
There ARE Costs Assoc'ed with Publishing
I want to point out that there are costs associated with high-quality publishing that I don't think have been mentioned thus far. Peer reviewers do their vital work for free, but someone has to administer the process -- track the submissions to a journal, get the articles out to reviewers, remind reviewers to submit reviews, correspond with authors through revision/acceptance/rejection. The scientist (usually "editor-in-chief" of "chief editor" of the journal) who does this on behalf of a for-profit publisher is normally paid; in other cases, the scientist-editor must hire an assistant to help, and someone must pay the assistant. If the journal is pub'ed by, say, a non-profit academic society, the society staff may do this work, and that staff need to be paid.
Also: copy editing. It has value, when done right. Styling (making all headings look alike, making elements like equations look right and alike, etc.): Reasonable people may disagree on the value of this; I think it helps. "Production": If you have copy editing and styling, you must have checks and back-and-forth between author and proofer. Printing: Until all journals go to all-electronic, someone's gotta pay to produce the print copies. Mailing: As long as there is print. . . Copyright enforcement. Etc.
Now, these services need not be done by for-profit publishing companies. Academic societies do some of it and tend to charge much less for their journals -- which are often of equally high quality or even much better quality than those produced by the for-profits -- than the for-profits. I just hope that the employees who do this work are paid decently. (Non-profits are known for their long hours and low pay.)
Any useful discussion of the future of the academic journal must account for these realities. If/when publishers are out of the mix, some other sorts of entities will need to step up.