How Traditional Publishing Hurts Scientific Progress
A battle that has raged for over a decade between advocates of open science and publishers of traditional scientific journals is coming to a head.
Michael Eisen is a molecular biologist at UC Berkeley and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His lab studies how genome sequences encode the complex patterns of gene expression that underlie animal development. He is also a strong proponent of open science, and a co-founder of the open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS). He blogs at www.michaeleisen.org.
Eighty five percent of published papers remain locked behind subscription pay walls, accessible only to those affiliated with universities and other large research institutions. But new journals that make everything they publish freely available are growing rapidly. And government efforts to make the results of all publicly funded scientific and medical research accessible to everyone are expanding, despite industry-backed legislative efforts to end them.
Backed into a corner, traditional publishers have launched a public relations campaign of sorts, attempting to justify their business practices by highlighting the value they add by overseeing peer review and editorial selection. Charging for access to their content, they argue, is the only way they can recoup their costs.
This argument resonates with many interested parties. Most scientists value peer review, believing it protects and improves the papers they publish and read. They also place great stock in the sorting of papers into journals organized on the basis of audience and importance, which plays a major role in determining who succeeds in science. The public, in turn, values peer review, believing it determines which scientific results they can trust.
Never mind that publishers are on shaky ground when they take credit for peer review, as reviewers and many editors volunteer their time.
