1.
Thomas Ingraham
Publishing Editor, F1000Research
thomas.ingraham@f1000.com
Emerging themes in
Agricultural Research Publishing

2.
OVERVIEW
• Increased openness
• Reduced delays
• Changes in research evaluation

3.
STATUS QUO
Often can only get this (unless you pay $$$):

4.
Presentations Articles Posters
Reviews
DataCode
INCREASING OPENNESS

5.
OPEN ACCESS
• Budapest OA initiative (2001)
• 232,400 OA (2011): 17%*
• Funder pressure: Gates
• Benefits
• Much greater reach
• Citation advantage
• Green OA: free / embargoes
• Gold:Article Processing Charges
• Research4life: HINARI/AGORA
• TheWinnower
* Laakso & Bjork. BMC Medicine. 10.1186/1741-7015-10-124
McKiernan et al. elife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16800

6.
• Status quo: no or unusable data
• Benefits
• Citation advantage
• Reanalysis
• Reuse
• Journal policies: SHERPA/ROMEO
• Funder mandates: Gates, CGIAR, DfID, NERC,
Wellcome Trust
• Data papers: method + data only
• Storing and finding data: repositories and
indexers
OPEN DATA
+ 9-30%
Piowar & Vision. PeerJ.
10.7717/peerj.175

7.
OPEN PEER REVIEW
• Status quo: Single blind review
• Double blind: Journal of Agricultural Science
• Open decision letters: elife
• Signed: Frontiers
• Open reports: Copernicus
• Both: F1000Research
• Why OPR?
• Context, strengths & limitations
• Constructive (social pressure)
• Proof of peer review (quality)
• Recognition for peer review

8.
MORE INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE
+ 9-30%
• Status quo: minimal information & focus on novelty -> irreproducibility &
publication bias
• USDA SAC recommendations on reproducibility:
• Positive results over-represented -> publish negative
• Data dredging -> open data, code and better stats
• Under-specified details in methods
• Open code: Github/Zenodo
• Open projects with Open Science Framework
• Grey literature: posters and presentations

9.
PUBLISHING LAG TIMES: STATUS QUO
Journal 1 80 28
Rejection
Published
Journal 2
DecisionSubmitted
Editor / peer review
Editor / peer review
Rejection
Decision
Submitted
Journal 3
Submitted
• Often decision based on novelty or perceived impact
• Article remains inaccessible (and so useless) for a long time
• Takes longer to solve urgent global issues

10.
PREPRINTS
• Benefits
• Free!
• Very quick: respond to emergencies
• Limitations
• Not reviewed
• Not edited
• Not indexed
• So doesn’t ‘count’ with evaluators
• Combined with journal
• Overlay journals: Discrete analysis
• Free, peer reviewed but no indexing
• Funder encouragement
• Wellcome Trust, ERC, NIH, MRC, Dep.
Biotech Gov India
Source: Open Wheat Blast

11.
PUBLICATION BEFORE PEER REVIEW
Approved
Reservations
Not approved
• F1000Research, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics,The
Winnower
• Quick responses to global issues: Ebola/Zika
• See article history

12.
REDUCING PUBLISHING TIMES
80 28
7 66
+ 101 days of being visible, shareable & citable
+ 35 days of knowing quality of research
Rejection
1 1
1 1
Days inaccessible
Days accessible
Journal 1
Published
Published 2 reviews
Journal 2
Final
Decision
Key
Plant Biology, Ecology &
Environmental Science

13.
RESEARCH EVALUATION: THE STATUS QUO
How do you know if an article is good?
‘‘…what matters absolutely is the scientific content of a paper
and…nothing will substitute for either knowing it or reading it’’ -
Sydney Brenner
• Journal level metrics:
• Journal Impact Factor: meant to be for librarians
• CiteScore
JIF year 3 = # citations year 1 + # citations year 2
# publications year1 + # publications year 2
• Issues:
• Can’t infer article quality
• Matthew effect
• Overestimates impact of a given article Lariviere et al. biorxiv.
doi.org/10.1101/062109

14.
ARTICLE LEVEL METRICS
• Quantitative
• Measures of reach
• Views/downloads
• Altmetric
• Impactstory
• Qualitative
• Open peer review
• F1000 Recommendations
• Biosketch

15.
INSTITUTIONS PROMOTING OPEN SCIENCE
• Recognize Open Science in
tenure/promotion/hiring
• OA archive for promotion
• Funder OS publishing platforms
• Work like F1000Research
• More to come!

16.
http://f1000research.com/channels/okad http://f1000research.com/subjects/399
OPEN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE ON F1000RESEARCH