The democratization of scientific publishing

Fiala and Diamandis BMC Medicine (2019) 17:12 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1249-1 MINI REVIEW Open Access The democratization of scientific publishing Clare Fiala1 and Eleftherios P. Diamandis1,2,3,4* Abstract Where should I submit my paper? This is a question that young scientists and trainees frequently ask. In this Commentary, we advise on how to make such a decision whilst balancing the risks and benefits. We argue that trying to publish in top tier journals may not always be the best option and that publishing in indexed, open access journals may expose research to the same or larger audiences. The value of research should not be judged according to the publishing journal’s name, but rather from other measures of impact such as successful commercialization of new technologies, number of citations, and downloads. We also highlight the role of mentors, who have the responsibility to protect the long-term interests of their trainees by balancing the consequences of acceptances and rejections. Keywords: Scientific publishing, Impact factor, Open access, Anxiety, Depression, Young scientists Introduction One of the most frequent dilemmas we face as supervisors is where to submit a paper prepared by our trainees. Typically, we ask students to prepare a list of possible journals, along with their respective journal impact factors (JIFs). After editing the work, a discussion takes place with the trainee about where to submit the manuscript. Expectedly, the majority of students wish to publish their papers to the highest possible impact journals, as judged by the JIF. Herein, we discuss the implications of trying to publish in elite journals and the consequences of this on the career and wellbeing of young investigators. Numerous investigators maintain personal subscriptions to Nature and Science magazines. In our view, the value of these journals is mostly related to their high-quality editorial content, with very few papers published in these multidisciplinary journals being directly related to our work (the discovery and validation of novel cancer biomarkers). Indeed, for our research purposes, we retrieve most papers by either searching PubMed, or through alerts, based on keywords. We assume that most scientists, young and old, follow similar strategies. * Correspondence: 1 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada 2 Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Since the 1970s, scientific publishing has changed dramatically (for a recent review of these changes please see our previous publication [1]); we used to spend considerable time in the library, which is now a thing of the past, and we used to photocopy reams of papers, whereas now we photocopy none. Most importantly, the invention of the Internet ushered in online, open access journals, providing readily available papers, in full text, without the need for a subscription. We have always advised our graduate students to read widely. In our lab, weekly meetings have become more diverse, with our ‘news and views’ section now covering areas mostly unrelated to our core research interests of translational medicine and cancer biomarkers. For example, in one of our latest journal clubs, our students presented efforts to avoid the extinction of the white rhinoceros, how to use social media to avoid suicide attempts, and some recent developments in the technology and ethics of autonomous cars. Where to submit? We follow at least three rules for choosing where to submit our work, and generally favor quick publishing and/ or open access platforms. First, we make sure the journal is indexed in PubMed, so that it can be retrieved by searching; secondly, we identify and avoid ‘predatory’ journals – sham journals that profit by charging unsuspecting contributors fake ‘author fees’ [2]; and thirdly we © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Fiala and Diamandis BMC Medicine (2019) 17:12 ensure the journal is affiliated with a credible, even if small, publisher or a recognized professional association. We agree with the notion that publishing a paper in a top tier journal may help secure better employment as well as help in being awarded major grants or prizes, among other benefits. However, these journals have some inherent issues. We recently argued that irreproducibility of papers in high-impact journals may be more frequent, and more dangerous (termed as ‘malignant’), than in lower impact journals (termed as ‘benign’) [3–5]. We and others have also repeatedly argued that the publication of a paper in a prestigious journal should not be used to extrapolate that the paper itself is valuable, impactful, or of high quality [6, 7]. We consider that other measures of impact, such as citations, patents, startup companies, and development of consumer products, may be of greater importance. Consequently, we advise our trainees to submit their papers to prestigious journals, if they so wish, but to be emotionally prepared to accept rejections, in many cases without their paper even being reviewed. Young investigators may be prefixed with the JIF. However, we recently predicted the future demise of the JIF and, indeed, we have seen our prediction come true with certain journals [6, 7]. To date, an increasing number of journals prefer not to advertise, or even seek to obtain, their JIF [8]. Furthermore, we recently proposed a new factor, called the CAPCI (citation average per citable item), to avoid using the misleading word ‘impact’ [8], as also proposed by others [9–13]. High-impact hazards Not many senior researchers discuss the fact that submitting to the highest-impact journals may be associated with adverse effects, especially for their trainees. It is now common knowledge that anxiety and depression among graduate students, post-docs, and young faculty is on the rise, with the issue attracting significant attention [14–16]. One reason, among many, is the tremendous competition between young investigators for jobs, publications, awards, grants, etc. Rejection of papers in high-impact journals is, understandably, painful and damaging to the morale and self-esteem of early career researchers; one of us (EPD) has witnessed these adversities very frequently over 30 years. Repeated cycles (...truncated)