The keynote speaker at the Open Repositories conference was Erin McKiernan. She is a researcher currently based in Mexico. (My notes for this talk were taken by hand; the wireless network was extremely flakey and I wasted a fair bit of time trying to connect and stay connected. Any mistakes or omissions that follow are mine.)
Her talk was titled ‘Culture Change in Academia: Making Sharing the New Norm’. Erin started off by talking about how we teach children the importance of sharing, but we seem to forget that by the time we are adults in academia. Academic culture needs to change, from one where individuals compete with each other, to one where collaboration and real openness is the norm.
Fear of being “scooped” (see Wikipedia definition, “Academic usage”) is a real fear among some academics. Erin suggested that this fear is just that, a fear, and that actual instances of scooping are very rare. (She asked the audience if they had come across instances of scooping – I chatted with her after her talk, she said she saw perhaps three hands raised in response to her question.)
For real change to happen there needs to be action in regional, national and international arenas – as well as individual action.
Erin mentioned Redalyc, an open portal for scientific journals in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal, which has some 900 Open Access journals and 330,000 fulltext articles – with NO Article Processing Charges.
In Mexico, Open Access has been signed into law by the Congress and work is now progressing to build a national level Open Access repository. Erin noted that only two universities in Mexico currently have Open Access mandates: the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, and the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.
Huge amounts of scientific literature remain locked behind paywalls, and as a result huge numbers of scientists worldwide have great difficulties in getting access to this literature. Erin cited the example of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, where she works: it only has 139 journals available to its researchers, of which 51 titles are only available in print. The high costs of subscription are prohibitive and non-sustainable – for example the cost for one title can be as high as half, or the entire annual salary for an entry level researcher at the Institute!
As an individual, Erin has pledged to:
- not edit, review or work for closed journals
- blog her work and post pre-prints wherever possible
- publish only in OA journals – therefore not in Cell, Nature, or Science.
- be upfront with co-authors about this commitment – e.g. if a co-author refuses to be open, she will pull her name off a paper.
She said that some have suggested to her that this is tantamount to “career suicide”. Erin’s response to this is that she “cannot live with locking up my work”.
Erin acknowledged that early career researchers hear a lot of negative messages about Open Access:
- that OA journals are less visible
- that OA journals have low impact (i.e. low journal impact factor)
- that the peer review process for OA journals is of low quality
- that you won’t get a job/grant/tenure if you publish in OA journals
- that OA publishing costs too much (referring to Article Processing Charges)
She proceeded to debunk these myths. Citing the so-called Bohannon Sting, Erin made the point that questionable practices are not restricted to OA journals only. She argued that the more open and findable your work (and data) is, the more citations you are likely to get. Openness also has the benefit of making your work more accessible by others, and provides more opportunities for collaboration.
“Don’t worship the journal impact factor!” she said, suggesting that if researchers are really concerned about impact factors, they can still choose to publish in Open Access journals that have relatively high impact factors.
She pointed out that poor peer review is a problem for many journals, not just OA ones. She pointed out that high retraction rates (for articles with mistakes or other problems) is often highest in the high impact factor, closed journals. Erin reminded the audience that the peer review process in OA journals is often transparent, so that authors (and readers) can check the quality of the review process.
Erin mentioned the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which makes a number of recommendations on how research quality should be assessed. For example: “When involved in committees making decisions about funding, hiring, tenure, or promotion, make assessments based on scientific content rather than publication metrics.” (recommendation 15) — I hadn’t heard of this declaration before, had you?
For those who still want to publish in closed journals, “go green”. Make your work freely available somewhere! Erin reminded the audience that self-archiving costs nothing, mentioning Figshare as one option. And remember, don’t sign your rights away when publishing your work.
Erin’s talk was passionate and well-argued. There was also some interesting Twitter discussion about some of the points she made. Maybe the subject of another post, as I need to get ready for today’s events.