Feb
18
There is sometimes a feeling around scholarly publishing that its existence is self-justifying, and its margins are simply the price paid by the academy for a necessary service . If anyone doubts the entrenched complacency of many industry players ( and their owners and investors ), then they are invited to look at results from companies like RELX , published last week , which showcase a fine performance by the industry leader Elsevier . If not the growth engine in the portfolio any more , Elsevier still reports over 30% Ebitda , come OA , come Covid , come what may .
Those of us , and I am one , who now believe that the current publishing system is crucially undermined , and that pure-play journal publishing is an increasingly high risk business , have advised publishers for years to concentrate on the wider services and solutions context of getting research disseminated, to look at the data needs and their implications , and to concentrate on the emerging digital needs of researchers , institutions and funders working in the same contextual network.
And then , all of a sudden , you find yourself reading something rare – a White Paper from people who DO understand, who are addressing the whole workflow process of the researcher , who do appreciate the entire value equation at work here . The White Paper, entitled “ Imagining the Post Covid World of Scholarly Communications “ ( see link below ) comes from Cactus Global , an organization whose underlying DNA is in supporting the researcher , and not in journal publishing , but every journal publisher should read this , and then think long and hard about its implications .
For me , the commentary on peer review and its automation has special impact . Think of a time when authors are able to pre-prepare peer review research and package it with the submitted article . The implications of that for publisher claims around costs and publishing time scales are one thing . The potential for this to lift peer review away from publishers altogether is another . I had similar feelings about the section on recommendation engines and author engagement , and about the democratisation of access . The writers here are fully conversant with the ‘digital first’ world inhabited increasingly by researchers but , apparently , by few of their publishers. .Above all , this team of writers envisage a future based on searchable data , and the primacy of data , metadata and data derived from usage is a backbone assumption .
So what will the shifting of the tectonic plates described here produce ? Here are a few pointers that reading this paper induced me to think about :
- Will articles of the future be part-published , in stages , as research projects proceed? First the aims , objectives and funding efforts application ,and then the planned methodology , pre-registered in good Open Science practice . Then literature review , then findings after completion . All linked but timed differently .
- How close are we to the article made for machine readability ? I still have little idea of how much end to end reading by humans of newly published articles still exists in the market , but asking researchers the question usually produces hilarity that I might think that article reading , rather than machine interaction with articles , was still an issue .
- Will peer review then become a continuous process ? At inception , completion , and then a re-rating after 5 or 10 years ?
- Will OA authors demand services for their APCs? Dissemination to peer networks and groups ? Potential interest groups detected by knowledge Graph technology and updated ?
- Will reputational badging become standardised and accepted ? How will universities and researchers respond to the need for rapid assessment of the repute on value of research being reported ?
- And how will publishers and librarians react to the challenges involved ? Will they try to keep traditional practices and workflows afloat . Or will they be the champions of digital first methodologies as they strive to create fresh value within the research process.
These questions remain for me , stimulated by an excellent and thought provoking paper . Through this type of discussion a digitally initiated , as distinct from a print world simulated , workflow and value chain for bringing funding to research , research reports to users of all classes , evaluation of outcomes to and reputation management to all who need it will slowly emerge . The issues really are much more important than the future of publishing .
https://www.cactusglobal.com/imagining-the-post-covid-world-scholarly-communication/
Jan
19
We Don’t Have Time
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Have we learnt anything in the past year? Colleagues in the information industry are eager to tell me about the speed of change quickening , of “ digital transformation “ ( whatever that might now mean ) gathering pace and of boardrooms seriously embracing “ a digital-first future “ . They undoubtedly speak truth . Yet I still wonder about the impact of another revelation – when change lets rip , everything in our society can get changed in a very short time indeed . Last January Covid 19 was a single paragraph report in the “ other news “ section of most newspapers concerning a new type of flu found the previous month in the Wuhan meat market . Today the death count is in millions . No doubt , tracking the history of corona virus infections , we could build a very considerable back story , but at the moment I see a clear parallel in the information marketplaces . Innovation in digital networks is so often like this . Ignored , derided and underestimated for years , then gaining acceptance on a specific use basis , then , like a virus , rapidly spreading through whole populations who were previously unaware that they would ever be adherents or users .
Then lets turn to the other great challenge , for many the much larger and more important challenge – climate change . Is that going to behave in the way that I have suggested above ? Will we go on denying , minimising and covertly ignoring the problem , until at the end it becomes an overwhelming and tragic problem in which we are rushing at short term solutions to save lives and livelihoods . At least , having waited for the fires to rage and the sea levels to begin to rise , there are now signs of more co-ordinated actions , and of a switch in thinking . The language tells the story . At length we are turning from negativity around development into talking the way the UN has long tried to frame for us , and defining and supporting sustainable development goals . At length investors seem convinced that ethical investment makes sense , and not just in social terms but also in business terms . The ESG – Environmental -Social – Governance – movement is taking shape and has become recognised as an investment category of real interest and durability. A community is growing here – but how does it express itself as a community?
Where is the LinkedIn of social and environmental investment and concern ? Well , it is there but is under-invested itself in terms of the size of the opportunity . It is called We Don’t Have Time. ( wedonthavetime.org). It was created by a Swedish not-for-profit foundation almost two years ago . Now with help and investment from Noah Advisors , led by Marco Rodzynek , they are moving rapidly to fill the gap , raise new funds , and commercially relaunch to meet what many see as a huge opportunity . LinkedIn of course has huge numbers of climate concerned individuals , scientists and businesses already . But the B2B site seems at once too generalist and yet not generalist enough – it attracts many of the right people but needs a more B2C approach to grasp the breadth of the issues involved and the public involvement needed . WDNT sees clearly that it needs to act as a forum for updating environmental and market information , and it needs to guide users ,in a place where where information quantity far outstrips any notion of its credibility and reliability, as to what makes sense . With a core of critical scientists and environmentalists on board already , and 50 m Twitter responses last year , it has made a good start .
One thing seems central to all this . Building sustainability will be governed , in the end , by the availability of better and better data . Trying to build a value chain for ESG investments is difficult – project certification is still in its infancy , the ratings of investments currently available to both public and institutional investors are fragile . Why do investors think more highly of Sustainylitics risk ratings than they do of Thomson Reuters ESG scores ? So little pooled judgement is yet available that consensual views are hard to find , and the reasoning behind them even harder to rationalise . Since there is only $2 billion so far invested we clearly have a lot more to learn . As sustainability solutions build on the site we shall undoutedly learn more . Yet , as the site title suggests , we really do not have much time.
Marco Rodzynek boldly pronounced to his investors meeting that “ Sustainability is the new Digital “. For that to be true digital has to bring its values to the ESG sector in short order . WDHT needs to become a data hub for investors around the promising data areas of compliance and project certification , as well as around ratings and investment assessment . These are the sorts of areas that will eventually create commercial success for the venture . As these things develop WDHT will have to trade on being the point of exchange for the validation , assessment and endorsement of news from the climate change frontline . Given the bewildering inconsistency of reporting , using the critical faculties of its members to this end will be an achievement in its own right . The Investment round sponsored by Noah Advisers ends on 31 January . (Noah-advisors.com) ( johannes.luiga@wedonthavetime.org)
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