We recently hosted “Challenging the Science Publishing Status Quo”, an evening of talks and discussion with several distinguished speakers. Each guest speaker focused on one particular aspect of publishing and peer review.

We’ve recorded all the talks, and will be posting them one by one, starting today, and continuing throughout next week. The guest speaker video schedule is at the bottom of this post. In addition, we’ve uploaded the opening talk by Rebecca Lawrence today, and will publish Vitek Tracz’s closing words next Friday (May 10) alongside the panel discussion.

Challenging the Science Publishing Status Quo

After a short introduction, Rebecca Lawrence, Publisher of F1000Research, presents a brief history of scientific publishing:

She introduces the five key issues that each speaker will address: publication delays, publication of non-standard studies, open data, transparent peer review, and the importance of open access.

Rebecca’s slides are available via F1000Posters.

Rapid publication

The first issue – publication delays – is addressed by Lawrence Kane, Associate Professor of Immunology, Director of Immunology Graduate Program, University of Pittsburgh. He introduces himself as an avid user of and contributor to F1000Prime, and now an author in F1000Research.

You can find the slides for this presentation at F1000Posters.

He addresses the importance of rapid publication and describes how in some fields, for example immunology, the speed of publication of scientific findings has gone down over the years, even though, as Rebecca’s talk (above) also mentioned, technological advances should have made it possible to publish much faster.

Kane refers to a blog post by Michael Nielsen (author of Reinventing Discovery) which lists the factors that led to our current system of peer review: increased specialisation of science, an increase in the number of papers, and new publishing technologies.

Next, Kane discusses the resistance to reform the peer review process, and points out that reviewers often don’t merely assess a paper on its own merit, but try to determine whether it’s a fit for the particular journal they are reviewing for. He calls this the “tyranny of the impact factor”.

“The problem here is that regardless of what happens during the peer review process, (…) the ultimate impact of a study is not really immediately apparent.”

Finally, he points out that publications like F1000Research can help overcome the resistance to change by combining speed of publication with peer review.

“One of the main advantages of this kind of model is the speed by which you can make your findings known. (…) This does not necessarily nee dto be at the expense of quality. There still needs to be peer review.”

Video schedule

Of course there is much more to be said about publishing, peer review, open access and open data, and we have a full week of videos still to come:

Monday, May 6: Keith Flaherty – The benefits of publishing non-standard studies

Tuesday, May 7: Steven Hyman – The importance of open data publication

Wednesday, May 8: Sue Griffin – The benefits of open and transparent peer review

Thursday, May 9: Gary Borisy – The move towards open access by governments and funders

Friday, May 10: Discussion