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Advocating for change in the scientific enterprise
The document discusses the current challenges and systemic issues within the scientific community, emphasizing the need for change driven by social and political incentives. It advocates for the increased use of preprints as a means to enhance visibility, collaboration, and transparency in research, while acknowledging concerns regarding reputation and publication acceptance. Additionally, it outlines strategies for fostering a more inclusive and efficient scientific enterprise through advocacy and organizational efforts.
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Advocating for change in the scientific enterprise
- 1. Advocating for changein the scientific enterprise Jessica Polka Director, ASAPbio Visiting Scholar, Whitehead Institute Visiting Fellow, Harvard Medical School Twitter: @jessicapolka
- 2. The ivory toweris not a bubble • Interactions with other scientists can be intensely political • Dependent on public support/funds • Profoundly influenced by policies and infrastructure Daniel Parks/flickr
- 3. The way wedo science is driven by social and political incentives What we measure • “Impact” (ie Journal Name/IF) • # of papers • Prestige of institution/mentors What we don’t measure • Reproducibility • Openness/sharing • Mentoring
- 4. Are these structural forcesdriving us to do the best science possible?
- 5. How did weget here?
- 6. 1945 The Wartime Deficit Withmounting demands for scientists both for teaching and for research, we will enter the post-war period with a serious deficit in our trained scientific personnel.….for it takes at least 6 years from college entry to achieve a doctor's degree or its equivalent in science or engineering. WE MUST RENEW OUR SCIENTIFIC TALENT Centers of Basic Research Publicly and privately supported colleges and universities and the endowed research institutes must furnish both the new scientific knowledge and the trained research workers. Each year under this program 6,000 undergraduate scholarships would be made available to high school graduates, and 300 graduate fellowships would be offered to college graduates. The US research enterprise is built on a model of continuous expansion
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- 9. 9 Academia is notdiverse & inclusive enough Gibbs et al 2014
- 10. Age at independencehas increased
- 11. Grant success ratesare going down
- 12. Ron Vale, bioRxiv/PNAS2015 More data now required to publish a paper
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- 14. The environment is“hypercompetitive” What has changed? Less money, more people
- 15. Research funding grew,then shrank Center for American Progress “The doubling”
- 16. https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2016/05/31/how-many-researchers/ More applicants forresearch grants (but not more awardees)
- 17. And yet, moregraduate students are enrolling than ever
- 18. Each PI isnow graduating more students Ghaffarzadegan et al 2015 NSF data via FASEB
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- 21. Is biomedical researchin trouble?
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- 23. So, what shouldyou & I do?
- 24. Scientific citizenship • Awareness •Discussion • Organizing • Action • Datahound • Drugmonkey • Small Pond Science • Woman of Science • Local groups • Scientific societies • Communicate with congress – CLS, AFS • NIH RFIs • Twitter
- 25. Organizing - Postdocstaking a seat at the table Future of Research (FOR) • ~9 meetings across the US and Canada • Now a Massachusetts non-profit with a full- time Exec Director, Gary McDowell • Developing resources for postdocs (FLSA, etc) and students • Amplifying voices of postdocs through advocacy
- 26. Organizing - Scientificsocieties • The forum for scientific discussion • Leaders of culture change (see DORA) • Centers for science policy and communication • Interested in modernizing & the capturing the next generation
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- 29. NIH Request forInformation (RFI)
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- 31. Zach Chisholm, flickr Pickinga problem
- 32. Publication is essentialto scientific progress
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- 34. Publishing has changed RonVale, bioRxiv/PNAS 2015
- 35. What to doabout it? Problem: fast and open venues are not ‘impactful’ venues
- 36. A preprint isa manuscript posted online before journal-organized peer review
- 37. Preprints & journalsare compatible Berg et al Science 2016
- 38. arXiv: 100,000 manuscriptsper year Preprint servers have existed for 25 years In Biology
- 39. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 Jan-03 Jul-03 Jan-04 Jul-04 Jan-05 Jul-05 Jan-06 Jul-06 Jan-07 Jul-07 Jan-08 Jul-08 Jan-09 Jul-09 Jan-10 Jul-10 Jan-11 Jul-11 Jan-12 Jul-12 Jan-13 Jul-13 Jan-14 Jul-14 Jan-15 Jul-15 Jan-16 Jul-16 figshare (filtered byPrePubMed) Preprints.org (articles/reviews in bio/life/med) Nature Precedings (manuscripts, from search results) The Winnower F1000 Research PeerJ Preprints (bio/med/life) bioRxiv (from bioRxiv) arXiv (q-bio w/cross-lists, from arxiv.org stats) Version 1 | asapbio.org Preprints are taking off in biology
- 40. • Benefits ofpreprints • Concerns surrounding preprints • Taking action • Recent updates
- 41. Lack of accessto literature Current problem Preprints are immediately available to everyone around the world
- 42. Preprints are publiclydisclosed work that can be evaluated for a PhD thesis, postdoc positions, fellowships, or jobs. Training periods are long; students/postdocs wait to publish Current problem
- 43. Preprints are publicdocuments that enable committees to see the most recent work of an applicant. Recent work is “invisible” to grant and promotion committees Current problem
- 44. The immediate visibilityof preprints enables invitations to meetings, new collaborations, etc. Your most recent work is also invisible to your colleagues Current problem Also more feedback on your manuscript than 2-3 anonymous peer reviewers
- 45. Lack of transparencyand length of review creates difficulties for establishing priority of discovery Current problem Preprints have a time stamp and DOI number; public evidence of what work was done when
- 46. Information is beingheld within laboratories for longer periods of time With preprints, new knowledge is immediately accessible, allowing research overall to advance. Current problem
- 47. Concern: We can’tbe trusted to share our work before peer review • Reputation is important Flickr/NASA Goddard
- 48. Concern: Journals won’taccept my preprint Nature and Nature journals, Science, PNAS, Cell, eLife, J. Cell Biology, EMBO, ASM journals Oxford Press journals, J. Biol. Chemistry MBoC Genetics J. Neuroscience ……. Search Wikipedia: list of academic journals by preprint policy Contains links to original policies
- 49. Concern: How canwe ensure ethical disclosure of data? Preprint servers should (and already do!): • Screen for human subjects research • Ensure that authors agree to posting • Expect that methods are present and complete
- 50. Concern: How shouldpreprints be covered in the media? Cell phones & cancer Vaccines & autism
- 51. Concern: I’m goingto get scooped http://asapbio.org/preprint-info/preprint-faq Paul Ginsparg, founder of arXiv on scooping: “It can’t happen, since arXiv postings are accepted as date-stamped priority claims. Eventually I came to understand that biologists do not use “scoop” in the standard journalistic sense… Instead “scooping” in the context of biology research appears to mean using information or ideas without proper attribution.” http://asapbio.org/drafts/draft1 Draft statement on disclosing & crediting scientific work “As responsible citizens of the scientific community, we...will fairly cite original work presented as a preprint in our own scientific papers, just as we would cite a journal publication. We will acknowledge such work, as appropriate, in our presentations at scientific meetings.” ie: preprints are public but not obviously well-respected
- 52. Posting preprints isa good experience 392 responses. Results at asapbio.org/survey
- 53. Accelerating Science and Publicationin biology Feb. 16/17, 2016 at HHMI Headquarters Strong consensus that broader use of preprints could become a valuable addition to the journal system (Organizers: Daniel Colόn-Ramos, Jessica Polka, Harold Varmus, Ron Vale)
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- 55. Encouraging the productiveuse of preprints • Visibility • Network effects • Easy to find • Standards • Screening • Citation • Preservation, access, licensing • Policies • Funders • Journals • Institutions #ASAPbio ASAPbio Ambassadors
- 56. Encouraging the productiveuse of preprints • Visibility • Network effects • Easy to find • Standards • Screening • Citation • Preservation, access, licensing • Policies • Funders • Journals • Institutions
- 57. A new kindof marketplace for papers October 4, 2016
- 58. UCSC & TheRockefeller University job ads Sept 26 2016
- 59. In the interestsof accelerating scientific discovery, the Biohub will establish a publication policy for open and rapid dissemination of research results: all Investigators will be required to post manuscripts on Arxiv on the date of submission to peer- reviewed journals. https://med.stanford.edu/rmg/funding/chan_zuckerberg.html
- 60. If a scientistwants to cite an interim research product in an NIH application or report, the citation should meet certain standards. These standards might include: •Ensuring the document is preserved, findable, and freely accessible to people and machines •Links to other versions and associate data and resources •Attribution and disclosure of authorship, funding, competing interests, licensing, and other issues used in high-quality scholarly publication •A clear statement that the product is preliminary, and the level of peer-review it has received (if any) Note, NIH does not intend to require awardees to create interim research products.
- 61. Encouraging the productiveuse of preprints • Visibility • Network effects • Easy to find • Standards • Screening • Citation • Preservation, access, licensing • Policies • Funders • Journals • Institutions Proposing community-governed infrastructure (like PubMed Central) for preprints
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- 63. Robots are goingto steal our jobs (and this is wonderful) Nanopub.org Subject, object, predicate Blog post on scholarly kitchen
- 64. Only ~6% ofarticles can be practically reused Total articles (PubMed): 24.5 million articles Free to read (PMC): 4 million articles Open to download/reuse (OA PMC subset): 1.4 million articles
- 65. Thank you ASAPbio Co-organizers RonVale (UCSF) James Fraser (UCSF) Daniel Colόn-Ramos (Yale) Harold Varmus (Cornell) ASAPbio Funding Simons Sloan Arnold Moore Jessica.polka@gmail.com, @jessicapolka Mentors etc Pam Silver Iain Cheeseman ASCB FOR Funding Open Philanthropy Project FOR colleagues Kristin Krukenberg Sarah Mazilli Gary McDowell David Riglar & many others