If you could reshape scientific exchange to meet your needs, what would you change? Would you restructure the format of the journal article? Would you eliminate the article altogether, opting for an open notebook approach? Take a minute to think about what you, as a scientist, would change if you had the opportunity to shape the future of scientific publishing.
Last night I had the opportunity to do just this. I was lucky enough to participate in a roundtable discussion at Springer, which sought to improve the scientific publication process by probing local scientists. The group was made up of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from several universities in the New York area. All participants were actively participating in biomedical research, though their specialties varied. The discussion centered around two main questions. First, what aspects of the research process could be improved through online communication? Second, how is scientific publishing likely to change in the future?
Let’s go in order. The general consensus among the group was that a creditable source for troubleshooting a protocol was lacking and that the web is an excellent medium for communicating these issues. Though protocol sites such as Cold Spring Harbor Protocols offer a wealth of information, they lack troubleshooting capabilities. In turn, listserves like Bionet allow scientists to freely discuss protocols, but lack a central database. But you’re in luck. Springer has recently launched the Springer Protocols site, which allows users to post comments and questions on any available protocol. In essence, it functions in a similar manner to a customer review for a product you are interested in purchasing. Researchers can search the database and post questions or feedback on a particular protocol. It even has some cool features like video protocols and a free protocols section for those who don’t have a subscription.
We then went on to discuss the future of academic publishing. Most members of the group felt that the hard-copy journal article will become obsolete as web communication grows; thus, improving the online search is essential. Suggestions included reformatting the abstract so a reader can quickly identify relevant components of an article, such as the model system or the pathway of interest. Rather than hide those details within the text, they should be presented in a sort of keyword format for the reader to scan. Another group member even suggested adding a links section to an article, allowing readers to navigate to relevant sites easily. These changes would surely ease the research process.
So, I invite you now to offer your suggestions for improving scientific communication. It may shape the future of scientific exchange.
May I enquire as to what exactly Springer offering a subscription-based protocols site has to do with the future of scientific publication? Even contributing a protocol to their site sounds exactly like the existing process of publication.
Will you accept Creative Commons-licensed protocols?
Are you planning to open up commenting and reading of comments to the public?
Are you going to allow the full text index to be spidered by search engines?
Putting aside the issue of publishing protocols, it is unfortunate that I am increasingly being confronted with the choice of submitting an article to a traditional journal that my institution (and your institution soon) does not carry due to budget cutbacks, or trying to come up with funds I don’t have to publish in an open access journal that the majority of my peers can actually read…
William: I do not represent Springer, so I invite you to post these questions to them. As far as your first comment, sites like these will allow protocols to be rated in a sense, providing other users with information on their effectiveness.
Ryan: I do agree, this is unfortunate. Perhaps in these poor economic times, cutbacks will raise awareness of public access journals. It may even end up benefitting the scientific community in the end.
It sounds like Springer are trying to something good with their Protocols service. It certainly needs some attention. Under its previous owner, Human Press, this service (then known as biomedprotocols if memory serves) had a reputation for mediocre quality and (to my mind) it was a tad overpriced. Rivals such as Wiley’s Current Protocols or the newer offerings like CSHL Protocols and Nature Protocols seemed like better bets. Not forgetting classics like Methods in Enzymology, from Elsevier, the Practical Approach series from OUP (still mainly print only, AFAIK), and a few other smaller series.
Some years back BIOSIS had the brilliant idea of creating a unified index to protocols published in all kinds of places. Called MethodsFinder it didn’t do well. Later changed its names to MethodsBase and moved to The Scientific World, but I think it has sunk without trace.
I think it would be interesting to brainstorm about a better way of organising protocols publication.
Caryn: My impression with Springer Protocols is that they’re trying to catch up with the products that are already out there (particularly CSH Protocols, Current Protocols and Nature Protocols, as Frank mentions and links to above), rather than breaking new ground. However this does not detract in any way from the fact that the new Springer site is a vast improvement on it’s previous content – and that it is always good for the end user to have a variety of products from which to choose!
As an editor on Nature Protocols, I can really only talk with authority on our own product, but all of the features you mention above have been available on Nature Protocols since it launched in 2006. We have 2 ‘strands’ of content: edited, peer-reviewed Nature Protocols (which require a subscription to access); and community generated Network Protocols (which are not edited or peer-reviewed and are freely accessible). Users (whether subscribers or not) have always been able to post comments on all of our content, and these comments are freely visible to everyone. We also have videos on our site (provided by authors and currently freely accessible as Supplementary Information), some of which are highlighted on our movies page – we are thinking of ways to improve this service. We also have a Discussion Forum here on the Nature Network.
In fact, I think all of the main online protocols resources have the commenting functions on their sites? And most also have some form of video content, often through a partnership with JoVE.
I think it would be interesting to brainstorm about a better way of organising protocols publication.
Frank: I totally agree! Obviously this is something of particular interest to me, but I think that of all the scientific publication types, protocols are the ones that can benefit most from an online presence and all its available functionality. But we need to know what functionalities and features bench scientists think are indispensible – and which are superfluous.
Caryn, the actual details of Springer’s approach here, in conjunction with your perhaps a bit grandiose title really rubbed me the wrong way. It has taken me a little while to sort out exactly why, but I think I can explain it now.
I think academic publishers are making the same mistake that record companies and movie studios made when they began to establish a presence on the internet. The record companies seemed to haughtily assume that because they’re, you know, actual companies with years of experience, that their authority will carry over to the web, and that people would continue to pay the same price for their content. It turns out that a significant amount of the value to the consumer was not in the content itself, but rather in the distribution channel. In other words, people were paying more than the content itself was worth because they didn’t really have any other choice. As soon a viable alternative presented itself, namely file-sharing, they immediately jumped on it. They didn’t make the switch only because they could get something for free, but also because they got something better. They got individual tracks from which they could easily make their own mixes and they got recommendations of other similar artists and they got the ability to play their music anywhere and carry a whole library in their pocket. A market was developing where there had previously been only a monopoly, and as always, the market sets the price.
As we all know now, the record studios didn’t understand this. Instead of finding out what the new market price was, they tried to make the digital object just like the physical object, apparently thinking that if they could do this, they could continue to get the same price. This effort was fundamentally flawed if the pre-internet value was artifically propped up by their monopoly on distribution, and now that we know that people are quite happy paying $0.99 per track if they get the added features expected of a digital object – remixing and sharing and recommendation and convenient storage – we see that the value intrinsic to the content was actually highly inflated.
Springer seems to be making the same mistakes the record companies did. Before the internet, people subscribed to print journals which needed skilled editing and, because there was no other alternative, paid the subscription cost charged by the publisher. However, there are now alternative channels through which people can publish and receive content, and like a digital music file, these new formats can also be remixed, shared, backed-up, and discovered in new ways. Accordingly, the value of the content comes in part from the content itself, and in part from what you can do with it.
To provide a high-value online protocol database, they need, in addition to the value they add by their expert editing and recognized brand name, add the value expected of a bit of digital content. For protocols, such things include:
Collaborative editing
open access
sharing of content (the way youtube allows embedding of videos on other sites)
user commentary and rating
What makes these features valuable is that they open the data up to a larger audience, and in doing so, harness the attention of more people. Springer now needs to show that they have considered that the price people were paying for a published book of protocols may have been inflated by the oligopoly control of publishing, back when things were printed on actual paper.
In order to present a value proposition, they’re going to have to address whether their careful, expert, diligent editorial process really does provide more value than an open collaborative approach. It’s not that everyone on the internet wants things for free, it’s that there are now more channels for content distribution than before and if we’re going to pay, subscription-based content providers have to prove their worth, which means swallowing their pride and admitting that in some cases a well-maintained, motivated community of amateurs can do a better job than a small number of experts. Potential subscribers are asking themselves whether subscribing to a journal or site is worth it, and they want to see that the publisher is aware of the competition they face from a well-organized, free, amateur effort and that they’re pricing themselves according to the value they add over and above the open source alternatives. The problem with this subscription-only approach is that it actually reduces value by restricting the people who see the content and therefore the quality of the ratings and feedback and collaboration they receive.
Springer’s effort, besides being a me-too, doesn’t make this value proposition. The lack of a comparison of themselves to open access protocol providers leaves one wondering whether they haughtily assume that, because they’re an actual publishing company, anything they do will be better than a free alternative, essentially pricing open source at zero. That gives me no assurance that they’re fairly pricing themselves, and quite frankly, I don’t see that they are any better than something like OpenWetWare and certainly not better than the aggregate sum of all the open access protocol sites available.
I’m willing to be persuaded.
they’re going to have to address whether their careful, expert, diligent editorial process really does provide more value than an open collaborative approach
William – I think you are right. I was trying to form a thought like this but couldn’t quite get there.
What Springer and the others do have is a collection of tried and tested protocols, from many of the world’s best labs. How long will these retain their value, or uniqueness if the idea of “open protocols” does take off?
Also, imagine if in a few years’ time PubMedCentral has captured a high proportion of biomedical literature, all stored as XML. What could you do by trawling through all those methods sections?
Frank, William, and Dorothy- Thanks for your input. I was away for a bit, so my apologies on the slow response. I do understand that Springer is really on par (I.e. joining in) with other protocol sites, such as Nature Protocols. I was merely reporting on the event, not making any statement in comparison with similar sites, other than CSH. I still think the commenting feature is valuable; thus sites like Nature Protocols and Springer Protocols are superior to CHS Protocols. However, I agree that as open access protocol sites grow, they will beat out subscription-based services.