The biggest problem for an open-access regime is how to ensure good refereeing, which if done correctly raises the quality of academic papers. Under the current system, editors decide which papers get refereed, and they choose the identities of the referees. Those same referees are underpaid and underincentivized, and often do a poor or indifferent job.

Many of the original papers on mRNA vaccines, for example, were rejected numerous times by academic journals, hardly a ringing endorsement of the status quo. More generally, since publication is currently a yes/no decision, the refereeing system creates incentives to avoid criticism and play it safe, rather than to strike out with bold new ideas and risk rejection.

Under my alternative vision, research scientists would be told to publish one-third less and devote the extra time to volunteer refereeing of what they consider to be the most important online postings. That refereeing, which would not be anonymous, would be considered as a significant part of their research contribution for tenure and promotion. Professional associations, foundations and universities could set up prizes for the top referees, who might be able to get tenure just by being great at adding value to other people’s work. If the lack of anonymity bothers you, keep in mind that book reviews are already a key determinant for tenure in many fields, such as the humanities, and they are not typically anonymous.

RW: What’s been the most troubling incident(s) in the journals’ responses to your correspondence?

BG: I think it depends on perspective. NEJM have simply come out and said, effectively: “We don’t care about outcome switching and we don’t care about your letters correcting it”. While we disagree, and we think readers will be surprised to hear that NEJM take that view, it is at least straightforward. The responses from Annals have really surprised everyone, because they’ve been so confused, so internally contradictory, riddled with factual errors, and then they’ve behaved very oddly around publishing responses to their “rebuttals”.

you’d think journals have a vital interest in making papers as high quality as possible, but apparently that’s not the case, which should make it easier to replace them with something better

on the current state of open access journals, which have improved many, though not all, aspects of scientific publishing. it’s good that articles are now mostly freely available, and data can be reused under creative commons, but the actual format is still awkward pdfs instead of a more wiki-like process that would make it far easier to work in citations and keep them fresh.

several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of ‘advertorial’ publications. Excerpta Medica, a ‘strategic medical communications agency,’ is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, it published a number of other ‘journals.’ Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least 6 fake journals were published for pharmaceutical companies.”

the best argument yet for the (hopefully imminent) death of scientific publishing.

The faculty of Harvard Law School has unanimously approved a motion for open access: articles will be made freely available in an online repository. With the success of this motion, Harvard Law becomes the first law school to make an institutional commitment to open access to its faculty’s scholarly publications.

the dam is breaking