Webinar@ASIRA: Emerging Themes in Agricultural Research Publishing

Thomas IngrahamPublishing Editor, F1000Research

thomas.ingraham@f1000.com

Emerging themes in Agricultural Research Publishing

OVERVIEW

• Increased openness

• Reduced delays

• Changes in research evaluation

STATUS QUO

Often can only get this (unless you pay $$$):

Presentations Articles Posters

ReviewsDataCode

INCREASING OPENNESS

OPENACCESS

• 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

• The Winnower

* Laakso & Bjork. BMC Medicine. 10.1186/1741-7015-10-124

McKiernan et al. elife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16800

• 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

OPENDATA

+9-30%

Piowar & Vision. PeerJ. 10.7717/peerj.175

OPENPEERREVIEW

• 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

MOREINFORMATIONNOWAVAILABLE

+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

PUBLISHINGLAGTIMES:STATUSQUO

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

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 IndiaSource: Open Wheat Blast

PUBLICATIONBEFOREPEERREVIEW

Approved

Reservations

Not approved

• F1000Research, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, The Winnower

• Quick responses to global issues: Ebola/Zika

• See article history

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

RESEARCHEVALUATION:THESTATUSQUO

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

ARTICLELEVELMETRICS

• Quantitative

• Measures of reach

• Views/downloads

• Altmetric

• Impactstory

• Qualitative

• Open peer review

• F1000 Recommendations

• Biosketch

INSTITUTIONSPROMOTINGOPENSCIENCE

• Recognize Open Science in tenure/promotion/hiring

• OA archive for promotion

• Funder OS publishing platforms• Work like F1000Research• More to come!

http://f1000research.com/channels/okad http://f1000research.com/subjects/399

OPENAGRICULTURALSCIENCEONF1000RESEARCH