University College London launches open access megajournal to help solve the world’s biggest challenges

[Alvin]

But they could do this now - and even set up their own journals to publish it in. The point surely is, would any University be prepared to publish such non scientific stuff? If instead of a free for all of unregulated journals, it became the norm that all research was published by Universities, it might actually improve the situation.

Which goes back to my saying why improve integrity when an institution believes its own lies, if it thinks its lies are true then of course it will use whatever unethical means it can rationalize because it thinks its right.
I don't see the need to make a flawed system hang itself in order to bring about improvements, i'd rather just make the improvements. Its a waste of time and resources and there is a lot of collateral damage involved.
It seems one generation learns a lesson and the next forgets those lessons until the consequences are realized.

 

[Woolie]

Its all very interesting. But I am worried about COIs. Universities have interests in their own researchers getting published. @Jonathan Edwards, you're right that if the admin was fully delegated, that could work.

But its still a bit like an independent survey of toothpaste preferences being sponsored by Colgate.

 

[Woolie]

But that assumes that the peer reviewers do their job impartially. What is to stop them using a few of the BPS crowd as the reviewers, as presumably happens now? Who would select and vet the reviewers? Or would any academic be able to publish post-publication reviews on the same site to counter the effect of biased or incompetent reviewers?

I suppose the open access model that's been developed in places like PLOSone and BMC means you have to make the reviewers' identities public. And all their comments. So if it looks bad for the editor, that might prevent it.

 

[Woolie]

I don't think any bludgeoning is implied. We get to a situation where everyone has to make up their own mind - which has always been the position of the Royal Society - take nobody's word for it. There is no justification for saying that bad studies should not be published. They should all be published and be seen to be bad.

I know I should stop talking now, but I'm not sure I agree with this. There are just such vast quantities of stuff out there now, and I just get so tired of having to wade through the sheer volume of it. If its bad, and its not published, then at least it doesn't have influence, and I don't have to sift it from my GoogleScholar search.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I know I should stop talking now, but I'm not sure I agree with this. There are just such vast quantities of stuff out there now, and I just get so tired of having to wade through the sheer volume of it. If its bad, and its not published, then at least it doesn't have influence, and I don't have to sift it from my GoogleScholar search.

All the bad stuff is already getting published now, because there are journals that will publish anything. They even invite us to send them papers every day. Moreover, most of the research is being done specifically so that the authors can get brownie points for publishing. We need a system where there are no brownie points for publishing, only for providing reliable answers to important scientific questions. There is also serious problem with publication bias relating to negative studies and studies that put out new ideas. That gets addressed by mandatory publication. If everyone is obliged to publish any study they do they will think twice before they start because if they are obliged to publish a muddled account of bad methodology then they will get minus points.

I see this is a way to reduce the number of papers quite considerably.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Its all very interesting. But I am worried about COIs. Universities have interests in their own researchers getting published. @Jonathan Edwards, you're right that if the admin was fully delegated, that could work.

But its still a bit like an independent survey of toothpaste preferences being sponsored by Colgate.

It isn't like the Colgate example because all that would happen is that scientists would all put their work in the public domain. There would be no cherry picking. It would all be out there for readers to see. I now use Google rather than PubMed for searching because it provides more useful information. I think PubMed is now obsolete too. The idea that there are 'respectable' publications and others is bogus. All the really interesting stuff is being discussed on the net before publication anyway. The old pecking order system of publishing in 'good journals' served us very badly indeed.

 

[ladycatlover]

I'm sorry I'm late to this thread - struggling somewhat recently.

My guess would be that this is very likely to roll out within the year. It certainly could do. Then commercial journals will collapse just like the tape recorder industry did when CDs came out.

The tape recorder industry is making something of a comeback these days due to DWP insisting that if you want to record your assessment you must use a tape recorder, or rather either a dual tape recorder or two tape recorders. Digital recording is not allowed.

So in a similar way I imagine that at least some of the commercial journals will manage to hang on, at least for some years, possibly down to government intervention. After all, we can't have the general population finding out how poor much of the research that government relies on for legislation really is can we?

 

[Woolie]

It isn't like the Colgate example because all that would happen is that scientists would all put their work in the public domain. There would be no cherry picking. It would all be out there for readers to see.

But if there's no quality control, it will just be self-publishing, which we can all do already, and just load our new articles up on RG or whatever. What researchers want from a journal these days is mainly reputational clout, the quality stamp, and the visibility that comes from being in a journal people think is worth reading (for example, I never read the online updates from Frontiers, cos I think they just take anything. Can't be arsed wading through there for something good. But I do read the ones from PLOS, there's a chance of finding something good there).

So there has to be selection and peer review for it to be anything authors would really want. And then, you're back to the Colgate example.