The document discusses the current state and challenges of scientific publishing, highlighting issues such as slow publication processes, high rejection rates, and the dominance of expensive subscription models. It advocates for a cultural shift towards open sharing and collaborative practices in research through initiatives like open access, public post-publication peer review, and innovative publishing models such as overlay journals. The case study of ScienceOpen exemplifies how these changes could enhance transparency, accessibility, and the relevance of scientific communication.

1. Perspectives in Scientific Communication:
Publishing in Transition
Alexander Grossmann
HTWK Leipzig &
ScienceOpen
DPG Annual Meeting
Regensburg, 7. März 2016

2. 2
Too much information?
Over 2m new papers per year in STM only

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Too much information?
…and about 4m submissions per year…

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Scientific Publishing: Present Status
Problems:
too much information
slow publication process & high rejection rates
anonymous & non-transparent reviewing process
no credits for reviewers
expensive subscription pricing
IF-driven „glamorous journals“ (R. Schekman)
…

5. 5
Scientific Publishing: Present Status?
R. Schekman:
The Guardian
Dec 9 (2013)
Is this the present status…?

6. 6
Scientific Publishing: Present Status?
R. Schekman:
The Guardian
Dec 9 (2013)
…do we need a new culture of sharing?

7. 7
New culture of sharing…
Sharing rather than
ownership:
the new normal for
the next generation.
Creative Commons
CC-BY licenses
supports sharing vs.
ownership model of
copyright.
Image Credit: Bike Sharing Shanghai, John Flickr CC-BY

8. 8
New culture of sharing…
Social Networks
Communities
Crowd-sourcing
Open Data
Open Access
Repositories
Altmetrics
Open Peer Review
Science 2.0
Could we use this in science?

9. Perspectives in Scientific Publishing DPG Regensburg 2016
CC0 Pixabay
Alexander Grossmann

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Publishing in transition...
1991 2000 2005 2008 2010 2012 2014

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Publishing in transition...
Ways to publish research today
Directories (linking lists)
Repositories or pre-print server
OA journals (subject-based)
Journal databases (‚mega journals‘)
Aggregation networks
How about scientific communication?

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Scientific Communication today…
Peer Review
Scientists
= Authors
= Readers
= Reviewers
?
?
?
?
How to set up such a novel workflow?

13. 13
Scientific Communication today…
Peer Review
Scientists
= Authors
= Readers
= Reviewers
?
?
?
?
Scientific communication tomorrow…?

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Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
arXiv

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Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
arXiv

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Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
arXiv

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Scientific Communication tomorrow…?
arXiv
Dr. C. Conrad
Overlay journal principle

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Concept in principal discussed by
Timothy Gowers
University of Cambridge, UK
Fields Medal 1998
Elsevier Boycott 2012 (Cost of Knowledge project)
Massively collaborative Math project Nature 461 879 (2009)
Ideas: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/how-might-we-get-to-a-new-
model-of-mathematical-publishing/.
Launched Discrete Analysis 2016
as an arXiv-based overlay journal
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal
Overlay Journal Principle
Quality assessment: peer review

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Concept in principal discussed by
Timothy Gowers
University of Cambridge, UK
Fields Medal 1998
Elsevier Boycott 2012 (Cost of Knowledge project)
Massively collaborative Math project Nature 461 879 (2009)
Ideas: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/how-might-we-get-to-a-new-
model-of-mathematical-publishing/.
Launched Discrete Analysis 2016
as an arXiv-based overlay journal
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal
Overlay Journal Principle
Public post-publication peer review

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Open and public process
Fully transparent:
Who?
Which experience?
What?
Comments and Replies are openly shared
Reviewing not limited to a narrow time frame
Report can be cited (credited by DOI)
Reviewer is acknowledged
Post-publication peer review (PPPR)
N. Kriegeskorte: Front Comput Neurosci. 6 (2012) 1–18
Concept has been deployed at ScienceOpen

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Concept has been implemented for all disciplines
at ScienceOpen
Overlay Journal and PPPR Principle

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Case study: ScienceOpen

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ScienceOpen is a next generation
Open Access indexing platform
Aggregating arXiv and journal content
Over 11 million article records yet
2m open access articles with full text
All articles are open for
public post-publication peer reviewing (PPPR)
Further information provided per article:
# social mentions (Altmetric)
# open access citations (Open Citation Index)
related articles (Discovery section)
Case study: ScienceOpen

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ScienceOpen … discuss + review

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ScienceOpen … user profiles
Does post-publication peer review work?

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ScienceOpen … peer review statistics

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Sort by rating, citations, altmetric,…

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ScienceOpen … peer review statistics
…to find relevant papers – for you/your peers

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ScienceOpen … peer review statistics
…or to set up or curate your Collection

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ScienceOpen… start a Collection
Collections: how does it work?

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Editor(s) can start a Collection on ScienceOpen
Selecting papers from a list of over 11m article
records yet (arXiv plus PMC)
Commenting these papers as Editor
Invite peers to review (or wait for volunteers)
Examples:
Topical Collections
Conference Collections
Poster Collections…
ScienceOpen… Collections

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ScienceOpen… Poster Collection DPG‘15

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ScienceOpen… Paul Drude Institute

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Collections
CC-BY SA 3.0 Wikimedia by Acdx

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A new way to filter content
Independent of journal or publisher
Filtering to narrow complexity of current research
outcome in different aspects: topic, institution,…
Not pre-selective but consists of those papers which are
relevant to your peers
Flexible: not limited by (publication) date
and resource (journal) but a ‚living‘ list
Incorporate existing resources as (OA) journals, pre-print
servers or repositories (non-redundancy)
Engages transparent and open quality assessment:
public post-publication peer review process (PPPR)
To replace classical journals…?
Collections: Advantages

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A new way to filter content
Independent of journal or publisher
Filtering to narrow complexity of current research
outcome in different aspects: topic, institution,…
Not pre-selective but consists of those papers which are
relevant to your peers
Flexible: not limited by (publication) date
and resource (journal) but a ‚living‘ list
Incorporate existing resources as (OA) journals, pre-print
servers or repositories (non-redundancy)
Engages transparent and open quality assessment:
public post-publication peer review process (PPPR)
To replace classical journals…?
Collections: Advantages
Principle of future scientific communication?

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Scientific Publishing: Perspectives

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Literature
www.scienceopen.com/collection/Science20

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Scientific Publishing: Perspectives
Traditional Publishing Current Trends
journals = content containers interdisciplinary database
for specific discipline = „megajournal“ or Collections
IF does not provide information article level metrics (altmetrics)
about relevance of research
no data available open data
limiting article type to open to reproduction papers
original or „new“ research and negative results studies
static publication „living“ document; versioning
closed peer-review open evaluation;
anonymous reviewers post-publication peer-review
no credits for reviewer acknowledgement of reviews
no interaction between (open) communication and
authors and readers active feedback
content is paywalled open access (OA)
library pays for APCs paid by governmental
journal subscriptions or institutional funding partners
authors prefer prestigous and
highly ranked journals to publish ?

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Thank you!
Alexander Grossmann
Prof. Dr. rer. nat.
HTWK Leipzig
University of Applied Sciences
@SciPubLab
Alexander.Grossmann@htwk-leipzig.de