Re: Publish and Be Wrong

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

I am not attempting to disagree with Professor Harnad (he may 
even agree with me) but to pick up on two points.

The "best" research (i.e. research that has the greatest long 
term implications) is not necessarily published in the "top" 
journals. Most "top" journals go for good science but it is good 
science that is seen by the editorial team as having wide 
implications or sometimes just in "cutting-edge" areas. What is 
cutting edge now and what is seen as of general interest now may 
not be what is really useful for the progress of knowledge in 
five years time. One could give lots of examples from the past. 
The science in other journals may be just as good but more 
"specialised". That is what specialised journals publish. Their 
peer review processes may insist on the same level of scientific 
quality.

If these specialised journals are published by the larger 
publishers they do reach the same audience as the "top" journals 
because of the Big Deal. There are all sorts of objections to the 
Big Deal but the big deals of some publishers are bought into by 
80% or more of the libraries who might want them. There have been 
surveys. All publishers who publish specialised journals have 
noticed the year on year increase in downloads, sometimes quite 
striking. The number of print subscriptions are not really 
relevant any more as far as the penetration by the larger 
publishers is concerned.

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 1:10 AM
Subject: Re: Publish and Be Wrong

> On Fri, 10 Oct 2008, James J. O'Donnell wrote:
>
>> Fromthe Economist, 10/9/08, with full text at
>> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D12376658
>
>> With so many scientific papers chasing so few pages in the most
>> prestigious journals, the winners could be the ones most likely
>> to oversell themselves=97to trumpet dramatic or important
>> results that later turn out to be false. This would produce a
>> distorted picture of scientific knowledge, with less dramatic
>> (but more accurate) results either relegated to obscure
>> journals or left unpublished.
>>
>> The assumption is that, as a result, such journals publish only
>> the best scientific work. But Dr Ioannidis and his colleagues
>> argue that the reputations of the journals are pumped up by an
>> artificial scarcity of the kind that keeps diamonds expensive.
>> And such a scarcity, they suggest, can make it more likely that
>> the leading journals will publish dramatic, but what may
>> ultimately turn out to be incorrect, research.
>
> Whether it is true that there is a higher proportion of error in
> the higher quality journals is an empirical question, but there
> are reasons to be skeptical about the conclusions of this PLoS
> article. It says that science is compromised by insufficient
> "high impact" journals to publish in. The truth is that just
> about everything gets published somewhere among the planet's
> 25,000 peer reviewed journals, just not all in the top journals,
> which are, by definition, reserved for the top articles -- and
> not all articles can be top articles.
>
> The triage (peer review) is not perfect, so sometimes an article
> will appear lower (or higher) in the journal quality hierarchy
> than it ought to. But now that funders and universities are
> mandating Open Access, all research, top, middle and low will be
> accessible to everyone. This will correct any access inequities
> and it will also help remedy quality misassignment (inasmuch as
> lower quality journals may have fewer subscribers, and users may
> be less likely to consult lower quality journals). But it will
> not change the fact that 80% of citations (and presumably usage)
> goes to the top 20% of articles, though it may flatten this
> "skewness of science" (Seglen 1992) somewhat.
>
> Seglen PO (1992) The skewness of science. Journal of the American
> Society for Information Science 43:628-38