Month: October 2014

One of the trickiest parts about launching anything new, also true for PLOS ONE too back in the day (hard to believe now!), is that the best way to explain what you do is to show it in action. Since we only officially launched in May, we’ve been watching some interesting use-cases develop, by which we mean ScienceOpen articles with Non-Anonymous Post-Publication Peer Review (PPPR). Even though we publish with DOI in about a week, it’s taken a little longer for the reviewers to have their say (reviews also receive a DOI), but we’re finding that what they say is well worth reading.

These articles and their associated reviews reassure us that PPPR, which some feel is still pretty radical, is a nascent but potentially healthy way to improve the way we review research. They also start to show that PPPR can benefit all sorts of research. If it can work for less spectacular, negative or contradictory research, then perhaps it will shine for once in a lifetime findings (which are of course far more rare).

Example 1. Professor Hugo Ten Cate (et al), a member of our Editorial Board, from Maastricht University, Dept of Internal Medicine, Maastricht, The Netherlands, published an article entitled “The anti-coagulants ASIS or APC do not protect against renal ischemia/ reperfusion injury” with us. It has received two PPPR from relevant experts, one by Professor Nigel Mackman and the other by Professor Ton Lisman. What really helps to tell the story of this article, from the author’s perspective, is that Hugo has made a video in which he explains that the results of this paper were not spectacular, in fact they were mostly negative, but that doesn’t mean that the article shouldn’t be published (and other journals did not want to do that) because it balances out other papers that show positive outcomes. Naturally, we agree with him!

Example 2.  Assistant Professor Nitika Pant Pai (et al), a member of our Editorial Board at McGill University in the Department of Medicine and a Scientist at the MUHC Research Institute, published an article entitled “Head to head comparisons in performance of CD4 point-of-care assays: a Bayesian meta-analysis (2000–2013)” with us. It has received a detailed review from Dr Paul Drain, a Medicine Resident at Stanford University.  Again, the author made a video in which she enthusiastically explains her support for Open Access and the concept of PPPR.

Example 3. Daniel Graziotin, a PhD student in Computer Science at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, published an article entitled “Green open access in computer science – an exploratory study on author-based self-archiving awareness, practice, and inhibitors,” with us which is an exploratory study of the awareness/practice/inhibitors of self-archiving among authors in an Italian computer science faculty. It has received two reviews, the first from Professor Stephen Curry (on our Editorial Board) and the other from Dr Alexandros Koulouris. In this case, the author gave us an interview to explain the background to this initial piece of research.

Example 4. Professor Nikos Karamanos (et al), a member of our Editorial Board from the University of Patras in Greece, published an article entitled “EGF/EGFR signaling axis is a significant regulator of the proteasome expression and activity in colon cancer cells” with us. It has received two reviews, one from Prof Dr Liliana Schaefer and the other from Assistant Professor Satoshi Tanida. Again, the author gave us an interview in which he explains the background to his article and his feelings on OA.

What do these use-cases tell us? Mostly that its early days, so meaningful observations are perhaps premature! However, here are some thoughts:

• The reviewers that are being invited to the scientific conversation are participating and broadening the debate
• The reviews are respectfully delivered with a straightforward tone, even when critical (probably because they are Non-Anon)
• It’s good to see papers from the medical community, arguably the quintessential OA use-case for researchers, patients, their families and friends
• The reviewers are appropriately matched to the content, authors can suggest up to 10 and anyone with 5 or more publications on their ORCID iD can review any content on the platform
• The authors are largely, but not exclusively, from our Editorial Boards (no surprises here since they are usually the first to support a new publishing venture and are more senior so are freer to experiment)
• Reading Non-Anon PPPR is a new skill requiring balancing a scholars background with their reviews and comparing/contrasting them with those of the others
• None of these authors have yet used Versioning to revise their original articles in the light of reviewer feedback received (although this article is now on version 2)

Anyways, we hope you enjoy watching how PPPR at ScienceOpen evolves as much as we do! Feel free to leave a comment on this post to continue the conversation.

 It’s true that it’s been a while since I was climbing the scientific career ladder! My path was somewhat different to many but diversifying is more common now than it was then, for many different reasons that I shall briefly explore below.

For 10 years, I worked as a physicist and lecturer at the Jülich Research Centre, the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich, and the University of Tübingen. In 2001 I entered scholarly publishing – working at Wiley-VCH, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer and finally at De Gruyter as Vice President Publishing STM. Today, I am a Professor of Publishing Management at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences.

By most standards, I’ve had a good run and I am not done yet – these days I also enjoy my role as President of ScienceOpen working with a terrific team of enthusiastic colleagues in Berlin, Boston, and San Francisco. However, I remain mindful and respectful of my research roots and spend as much time as possible talking with young faculty, promoting their thinking and doing everything I can to support them because it seems to me that a scientific career got a lot harder than it was when I did it, and it wasn’t easy then.

To demonstrate my support of “Generation Open” and in honor of Open Access Week 2014, today I am personally announcing that we are waiving publication fees for Earlier Career Researchers until November 30th 2014 on ScienceOpen, the research + open access publishing network.

Far from being “riff-raff”, per Steven McKnight the President of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, who asserted that “the average scientist today is not of the quality of our predecessors” in this unfortunate essay, I believe, in contrast, that today’s scientists battle harder than ever to conduct quality science.

That young researchers continue to make progress with their hands tied is remarkable – reduced funding; cut throat commpetition for what money remains;  intense pressure to reach tenureship; more pressure to publish; a glut of talent (good for science but makes it harder to stand out) and not enough job openings.

ScienceOpen has a special interest in Earlier Career Researchers (ECR) and has posted other items of interest to this group, for example: “How to make science more open – 7 ideas for early career researchers“; a guest blog from Gary McDowell at Tufts entitled “Post-docs are doing it for themselves” and advice from leading OA figures such as Mike Eisen (co-founder of PLOS) on the thorny issue of whether it’s possible to publish Open Access and have a successful career or attain tenure (we’d like to think yes, it is possible!).  If you want to contribute to our blog then please refer to these guidelines.

To take advantage of my free publishing offer, all you have to do is be able to demonstrate that you are an ECR, typically defined as graduate student or Post-Doc. As long as one of the corresponding authors on an article or poster is an ECR, then all authors qualify for free publication. You must submit before 12am CET on November 30th 2014 to be eligible.

For those of you who are unfamilar with ScienceOpen here’s a quick run down, with short videos, of our services:

• Publish
• Review
• Register

If you have any questions, feel free to tweet me @SciPubLab, email me personally, or comment on this post and I will respond. Come and join us to experience ScienceOpen!

When it comes to preparing a poster for presentation, there are some amazing poster resources on the web for researchers at all levels of poster proficiency.

For those starting out, I like How to create a research poster from the Bern Dibner Library (simple and basic). For a comprehensive primer, I like Designing Conference Posters from Colin Purrington (comprehensive advice delivered with a sharp wit). Finally, if you are artistic and proficient (see Benjamin Gorman’s “draft” poster pictured below, looks great already!), then Dr Zen’s Better Posters and his constructive critiques can help to make your posters even more powerful.

To quote Dr Zen, “academic conference posters are often ugly, with tiny text, confusing layouts and dubious color schemes”. They may be so bad they elicit this reaction (animated GIF), courtesy of #whatshouldwecallgradschool. If we step back and think about the reasons why, it is because posters fuse two skill sets, research communication and graphic design, and both are slightly removed from the primary competence of “doing science”.

However, curiously, in an article entitled Poster Perfect in The Scientist, Colin Purrington observed that “Although occasionally there would be visually pleasing posters that promoted less-than-stellar science”, he usually found that “the attractiveness of a poster was highly correlated with the quality of the science”. Graphic design and scientific inquiry require different skills, but oddly enough, it appeared that “the people who understood the beauty of fonts had a sense of pitching their science” he said.

One reason to invest effort in preparing and printing a poster, is to communicate the essence of your research in a relatively compact space with the opportunity to interact with your audience if your content catches their eye. This may be particularly appealing for earlier career researchers who aren’t ready to publish or those who would rather avoid public speaking.

Previously, the other slightly frustrating part of poster preparation was their relatively short conference shelf life, possibly followed by a (by then dog eared) display of the poster in the lab. However, as is the case with so much of life, the internet has transformed this space such that digital poster publishing is the new normal. Posters can now happily live online and attract attention to your work in perpetuity.

Here at ScienceOpen, publishing posters is simple and pretty much like publishing an article but cheaper. Posters are published as a PDF in in ScienceOpen Posters (eISSN: 2199-8442). There are two routes to get involved, either your conference organizer has an arrangement with ScienceOpen and they pay a reduced fee and you can publish for free, nice! Or you fly solo and pay $120. Naturally, your poster is available for Non-Anonymous Post-Publication Peer Review just like our articles. To submit a poster, simply email our Editorial Office.

To kick off our poster section, we’ve published nearly 30 posters in total – 7 posters from the American Chemical Society Meeting; 7 from the International Symposium of Silicon Chemistry; and 13 from the European Students Conference where we awarded our first ScienceOpen Poster Awards.

Welcome to our wonderful world of digital posters!

Image credit: Open Source.com, CC BY-SA

Postdocs must make Science more open to have their voice – and get it heard.

Gary McDowell, Tufts University and Future of Research Symposium

We’re delighted to welcome Gary McDowell, a post-doc working on left-right development in frogs (his Twitter handle is appropriately named @biophysicalfrog) and involved in the Future of Research Symposium starting on Thursday of this week (check out the speakers) as our second guest blogger. That we have decided to cover issues of importance to junior faculty in this post is a deliberate choice because we want to encourage their participation in the scientific conversation and Open Access. For a flavor of our activities with this group, including our first ever students awards at the European Students Conference in September, check out the Earlier Career channel on our blog.

Now over to Gary…

Recently, Liz Allen from ScienceOpen and I discussed her blog post entitled “How to make science more open, 7 ideas for early career researchers“. Our conversation gave me some pause for thought about the role of postdocs in facilitating the scientific endeavor.  I also am a firm advocate of “post-docs doing it for themselves”.  I’ve been involved in the organization of The Future of Research Symposium, a two-day event for graduate students and postdocs in the Boston area to come together and discuss the issues facing young researchers at present, under the groupings of training, structure of the workforce, funding, and metrics of assessment.  One measure of the success of a scientist is through the science they produce, reflected in the papers that they publish.  At present, we are at a point in scientific publishing where there is a strong movement towards “open access”: science available to all.  This means freely available to read and re-use: no paywalls, no subscriptions, simply science that is freely available to the public.

There are many good reasons for publishing open access which even its detractors can itemize as pointed out in a recent tweet by Joseph McArthur (@Mcarthur_Joe) who highlighted this section of an assessment by analysts from Bernstein Research which was shared by the independent journalist Richard Poynder (@RickyPo)

“Stepping back to take in the big picture, we would be hard pressed, having spent six years networking extensively in the academic publishing and OA communities, even to articulate what problem is OA trying to accomplish. Ask a librarian, and you will be told that OA is meant to address the serial cost crisis (the rising cost of journal subscriptions and the impact this has on their capacity to fulfil the other missions of academic libraries). Ask a researcher, and you will be told that OA will allow more researchers to read their articles, leading to more citations and – ultimately – to better dissemination of knowledge. Ask an economist, and you will be told that OA will allow small and medium sized companies which do not have access to the latest research to do so, furthering the growth of the economy and job creation. Ask some activists, and you will be told that OA is meant to deflate the margins of capitalist exploitation of public spending. Ask an activist from emerging countries: you will be told that OA is meant to allow researchers and doctors in poor countries to have access to leading research. This lack of clarity on which problem OA is trying to solve, in turn, means that it is difficult to achieve any of these goals.”

There are clearly many noble goals to the endeavor of publishing Open Access.  However there are concerns, particularly amongst young researchers, about publishing outside of the “high impact factor” set of journals that are traditionally viewed as grant- and job-winners.  These issues were recently highlighted in a blog by Alexander Grossman, a co-founder of ScienceOpen. Major difficulties that postdocs face in Open Access include not having the final say on where their papers are published, or even when.  Many of us have smaller sets of work; or negative data; or data that aims to reproduce other’s work, which are all good pieces of science but are often not viewed as being worthy of publication.  In my own experience, I have been very fortunate to always work with principal investigators who are (reasonably) happy to publish smaller datasets or less exciting (but still novel) stories.

However my own experience with Open Access has been somewhat limited.  Changes to requirements for funding from Research Councils in the UK, and NIH funding in the US, have led to my research becoming gradually more open, most recently graduating from being behind a paywall for one year to being immediately open to the public.  As part of the preparations for the Future of Research Symposium, we have published an open letter to Science in the Winnower and an article in the Journal of Postdoctoral Research.  Both publications have then been rapidly disseminated on social media, for example through our @FORsymp handle to our target audience, for free and open discussion.  The experiences I have had with these publications, plus investigating other avenues for publishing open access, reinforce my own view that in the modern era, when people search less in particular journals and more on particular topics, that a paper being available rapidly and openly is more important than the competitiveness of getting into the journal.  Good work is good work, and recent controversies over paper retractions how that the Impact Factor of a journal is not necessarily a direct correlation with the rigor of the peer review of the science.  In fact, many of the controversies that arose from the STAP saga may have been avoided in formats with Open Peer Review, with people able to directly comment and review on the paper, rather than the initial concerns having to be raised indirectly on other media.

Postdocs need to make themselves heard and Open Access publishing provides a medium to do this.  A free exchange of ideas is encouraged not only by postdocs publishing in places where their papers are accessible to all; but by postdocs participating in the review process.  Whenever possible, I sign my reviews to make it clear that I am not hiding behind anonymity in the comments that I make, and so I am therefore careful to make sure they are fair and critical in a constructive manner.   ScienceOpen is one example of a progression from the typical reviewing process, using Post-Publication Peer Review to facilitate open and fair discussion and criticism of scientific work.  Not only is embarking upon peer review a great contribution to the scientific community, this is an excellent opportunity for postdocs to get experience in reviewing papers and also in providing reflection on how to write their own papers.

In her post, Liz advocates getting involved in journal clubs and conferences.  I would agree with this, and in particular we are keen for people to get involved with the Future of Research Symposium not only this week, when the symposium will be held, but carrying our findings forwards: we view this not as a one-off event, but a continuing endeavor.  I would extend Liz’s call-to-arms and suggest that postdocs get involved in scientific societies: many societies are now actively soliciting postdoctoral involvement at the very highest levels.  For example, the Genetics Society of America has posts on all committees – and its executive board – for trainees. The American Society for Cell Biology has an extensive network of postdoctoral volunteers, COMPASS. Many learned societies are engaging upon connecting with younger researchers who are, after all, aspiring to be their future members as established academics.

Finally, the most important reason for postdocs to get involved and raise their voices is to make themselves be heard.  There has been a call, in the most recent meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology for younger scientists to respond to the alarm raised by senior academics, in particular about the state of biomedical research in the US:

“The voices that are missing so far, [are] the young voices and we need to get them into the mix.”

Shirley Tilghman, PCAST, September 19^th 2014

That is the aim of the Future of Research Symposium, to try to initiate a unified voice on how graduate students and postdocs feel about the issues important to science and how it is carried out.  Our aim is then the continuation of these meetings, both locally and hopefully to inspire others nationally, to produce a voice which is ever louder.  The voices of young researchers are not, in the main, being heard.  Recently, an open letter was sent to the AAAS journal Science regarding concerns over its new widely-advertised open access journal, Science Advances, written mostly (but not exclusively) by young researchers. The response of AAAS so far has been to send the authors some Frequently Asked Questions. Likewise, a similar group has sent a similar open letter to the Society for Neuroscience over its new open access journal eNeuro.  The response was another email that did not address or attempt to answer any of our queries (but was a step up from the AAAS response).  In one particular case the term “riff-raff” has been used by Steven McKnight in his capacity as President of the ASBMB, to describe those “who never would have survived as scientists in the 1960s and 1970s”. There is a lot of support at the highest levels of academia, but clearly a lot of work needs to be done by our community to have our concerns taken seriously.

Postdocs have a lot of support in academia and beyond from those willing to speak out in our favor.  However, without the postdoc community engaging, raising their voice and making clear that they are present and essential to the scientific endeavor, there is only so much that can be done to change the system.  So I join with the call-to-arms to postdocs to engage in making science more open, and raising aloud their voices.