Online presentation at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries on how our journals are one of the core reasons for the reliability, affordability and functionality issues science is experiencing today and how to fix them.

1. BjörnBrembs
UniversitätRegensburg
http://brembs.net-@brembs
How our literature serves the
anti-science agenda

2. Breitbart, Dec. 2016: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/10/28/hear-scientist-talk-peer-review-reach-browning

3. Wikipedia: Das Politdrama „Schlageter“ wurde am 20. April 1933, dem Geburtstag Adolf Hitlers, im Staatstheater am
Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin in Anwesenheit von Hitler und hochrangigen Vertretern der NSDAP, der Wehrmacht und aus
Kunst und Literatur uraufgeführt. Der „Völkische Beobachter“ nannte das Stück »das erste Drama der deutschen
Revolution«. Das Stück wurde zu einem großen Erfolg für den Autor, auch in finanzieller Hinsicht.
Wenn ich Kultur hoere …
entsichere ich meine
Browning

8. https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-scholars-reproducibility/

13. “Vertrauen Sie Wissenschaftlern?”

14. Freedman LP, Cockburn IM, Simcoe TS (2015) http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165
61%
(n=100)
Open Science Collaboration

15. 10.1038/s41562-018-0399-z
Successful:
13/21: 62%

16. 10.1126/science.aaf0918
Successful:
11/18: 61%

17. • 2013: Announcement to reproduce 50 „high impact“
experiments
• 2017: Only 2 of the first 5 successful
• 2018: Only 18 (36%) experimentally possible
• 2021: All experiments done:
– 5 successful
– 7 partially successful
– 2 not interpretable
– 4 not reproducible

18. How reliable is the research in our
most prestigious journals?

19. 10.1107/S0907444907033847

20. Brembs, B., Button, K., & Munafò, M. (2013). Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291

22. DOI: 10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
And 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008984
-omics studies

23. “High-Impact” journals attract the
most unreliable research

24. The disaster that is scholarly
information infrastructure

25. More than 10.000€ for one article

26. Online submission US$ 21.70
DOI US$ 1.94
Plagiarism detection US$ 0.95
Fundref US$ 0.31
Bibliographic reference normalization US$ 25.00
Production of XML, PDFWeb, PDF for Print and EPUB US$ 100.00
indexing, online publication and interoperability US$ 66.45
Kosten pro Artikel US$ 216.35

28. Modified from ARL: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlstats06.pdf, http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlstat08.pdf
%
Change
-50
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Subscription prices
CPI/inflation
Journals purchased

29. 2017
Example:
2019
Averages:
Khoo, S.Y.-S., 2019. Article
Processing Charge
Hyperinflation and Price
Insensitivity: An Open
Access Sequel to the
Serials Crisis. LIBER
Quarterly, 29(1), pp.1–18.
DOI:
http://doi.org/10.18352/l
q.10280

30. 10.12688/f1000research.27468.2

35. Open Access at all costs

36. since about 2013

40. Scientists produce text, data and code

41. • Obsolete modes of access
• Journal prestige correlates with unreliability
• No scientific impact analysis
• Suboptimal peer-review
• Massive transparency issues
• No effective sort, filter and discover solution
• No functional hyperlinks
• Static data visualizations
• No content mining
• No social component
• No global search
• Hardly any user statistics
• etc.
…it’s like the internet in 1995!

42. Report on Integration of Data and Publications, ODE Report 2011
http://www.alliancepermanentaccess.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=ODE+Report+on+Integration+of+Data+and+Publications

46. UNIVAC (A-2) 1953: Software teilen und nachnutzen

50. 216.35
5000
SERVICE CONTENT
per
article
cost
[US$]
Potential
for
reform:
US$
9.56
billion
p.a.
tomorrow today
~3 billion / year
~2 billion / year

51. 216.35
5000
SERVICE CONTENT
per
article
cost
[US$]
Potential
for
reform:
US$
9.56
billion
p.a.
tomorrow today
• Substitutable Services (-> competition!)
• No author facing costs
• Journal functionalities can be copied
• Cost-neutral solutions for data/code
• No individual mandates necessary
• No journals, no need to judge journal quality
• …
• …
• …
• …
• …
• …
• Side effect: permanent, legal, public access
A sustainable scholarly infrastructure:

54. • Dynamic, version controlled
• Can be searched and text-
mined
• Near-immediate publication
• Different models for post-
publication review exist
• Contributorship in diverse
roles
• Open to everyone
Data
Code
Preregistration
DMP
Interpretations
Materials
Review/Quality
control

55. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uG1mcOEkLFFaJm9PDvink_Tabjzsb4aIiNf4pw7LJOg/edit?usp=sharing