Toward Science-Led Publishing

Abstract

The majority of scholarly communication today depends on publishing. An industry with estimated profit margins of between 30% and 50% (Van Noorden 2013), scholarly publishing has long been on a trajectory of consolidation, with 2022 estimates giving the top five publishers control over 60% of the market (Crotty 2023).

Through the medium of the journal, scholarly publishers play an integral role for scientific communities. On the one hand, journals need to provide value to their customers—authors (through APCs—article processing charges), or readers (through library subscriptions)—and on the other, they are incentivised to maximise profitability and to outcompete other journals. While the incentive structures at play for publishers are primarily commercial, all scholarly publishing has to exist in the same system, face similar considerations and play the same game by the same rules.

The interests of scholarly communication and publishing are not always compatible. What's good for publishing isn't necessarily good for science, and successful publishing strategies may be actively harmful to the scholarly record.

Science-led publishing is an opportunity to realign the current processes and reward systems in publishing and research to first and foremost benefit the scientific endeavour. It demands faster, fairer and more transparent modes of science communication. It is not an unachievable ideal; it is a choice within our current reach.

Science-led publishing means two things. First, the needs of science communication dictate how publishing processes and models work, what options are available to researchers, and how researchers are incentivised—how success is measured—by funders and institutions. Second, it is not an end state. Science-led publishing must continually reevaluate itself so that it best serves the current needs of researchers and research within current social and technological boundaries.

An example of this is how, despite technological advances, much of scholarly publishing still operates as it did in print. Where the print medium demanded works be final before they are shared, digital publishing allows works to be shared, reviewed and revised iteratively and publicly. This change could be relatively straightforward within our current technological limitations, and is already in place for some journals, yet much of the system exists in an inertia—why?

Science-led publishing enables faster scientific communication and expedites sharing and refining ideas and approaches ahead of formal review. The preprint becomes the standard research article type using existing infrastructure that is free for authors and readers.

Science-led publishing changes the relationship between authors, editors and reviewers to one of collaboration rather than control. Authors have more choice in how and when they publish. Reviewer recommendations are advisory rather than the cost of acceptance. Editors provide expertise, guidance and facilitation.

Science-led publishing prioritises transparency of approach and outputs. Research is made available freely to readers; sharing of underlying data and code becomes the norm. The work conducted during peer review is made available alongside research to help inform readers, to kickstart discussions, and to prevent the waste of these contributions.

Science-led publishing reshapes the relationship between publishers, researchers, indexers and institutions. Rather than research being judged on where it is published, the content of research is evaluated publicly. Open reviews and publisher curation statements form a history of each publication. Version histories encourage iterative improvements of research rather than final versions of record. A journal thrives not on the perceived quality of its publications but on the publicly demonstrated quality of the reviews it facilitates.

Today, publishers are all at once the gatekeepers of research, the validators, and the amplifiers. They control the flow of academia's prime commodity: The publication. They confer status and signals of merit to research and influence who sees it and how. All this leads to an intertwined relationship between research and publishing that has forgotten its purpose and created enormous conflicts of interest in how research publishing operates.

Reforming scholarly communication to prioritise the interests of science over publishing would help leverage available technologies and infrastructure, repurpose existing practices to realise the benefits they were always supposed to bring, and create more accessible and equitable means of participating in scholarly communication. It is a choice, and it is within our reach.

All the authors contributed equally to the concept, writing, and editing.

Both Damian Pattinson and George Currie are employees of eLife, a non-profit organisation working to reform research communication in line with the principles we promote here.