The Nature of things - Dr Philip Campbell - Challenges of Openness in Science Communication and Publishing

["Colin Steele" <Colin.Steele@anu.edu.au>]

Dr Philip Campbell, the Editor-in-Chief of 'Nature', gave a 
presentation on November 29 at CAMBIA in Canberra (details of 
CAMBIA below) on the topic "Challenges of Openness in Science 
Communication and Publishing".

The seminar ,which may be of interest to this list, was chaired 
by Dr Richard Jefferson who has recently been the subject of a 
profile by Richard Poynder in 'Open and Shut', September 22.

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It was an interesting presentation from Campbell, an influential 
figure, who was progressive in his advocacy of 'supplementary' 
science data collection, communication and manipulation but was 
more conservative in looking at the total research publishing 
field

Campbell said that he was speaking as an editor "not threatened 
by Open Access developments". He wondered if the "author pays" 
(always confusing term to an academic audience?) model was 
sustainable, given that it required a "big subsidy/investment 
from the owner (eg BMC) or philanthropy (PLOS)". I pointed out in 
the question time that the current system which he seemed to 
assume as a given, was based on the "philanthropy" of the 
university and research sector supporting many of the costs of 
the current system, for example through the university library 
budgets (Jan Velterop has made some cogent points in this context 
in his 'Parachute Blog' of 17 November, 
http://theparachute.blogspot.com/).

Campbell cited the non-mandatory policy of the US National 
Institute of Health as a "critical moment" which will "have been 
seen to have affected the Open Access movement". He cited "only 
limited support from funding agencies" but omitted to mention any 
specific UK examples such as the Research Councils. He 
stated,however, there was "a need to maintain political and moral 
pressures on funding agencies".

He believed that 'Nature' in its editorials/articles, etc had 
given a "balanced view of Open Access" and that there was no 
evidence so far of "lower quality thresholds in top Open Access 
journals". He cited in why "I dislike author pays" as follows - 
it puts downward pressure on the quality of the literature; 
over-states the problems of public access; understates true 
costs; and "I like being rewarded by lots of satisfied readers 
than by a few authors".

His "neutral" question was "is it possible to have one model for 
high selectivity journals and another, author pays, for the 
rest?". He praised Hinari and Agora as having "traction" but not 
being very well known. He noted that while a time delay for Open 
Access had been accepted by some publishers, eg 'Science', it had 
not been accepted by the 'Nature' publishing group, although it 
allowed immediate free access to encrypted text for computerised 
data mining. Free access to "authors versions" after a six month 
delay was supported by NPG.

Campbell did not seem to be across the institutional repository 
advances in specific terms only citing "D-Base" (sic) 
developments at MIT. He did not mention any of Stevan Harnad's 
prolific output and advocacy in this context instead focussing 
largely on the OA journal route. He did say however, IRs were 
"here to stay" but indicated that he was uncertain how open some 
institutional IR content was. (Surely the vast majority are?) He 
also cited the development of central repositories as being an 
alternative to IRs.

Open peer review was "not for us at the moment" and felt that 
many academics would not engage in unsolicited peer reviewing 
unless there were incentives and motivations. Interestingly, he 
then went on to state that there would be a marked decline in 
people volunteering to peer review as the science market place 
became more competitive and selfish. Researchers would still 
review for journals such as 'Cell' but not for the "lower 
journals" which he described as those with lower citations. 
Having said that, he indicated that he was not in favour of 
surrogates such as citations being utilised for individual and 
collective assessments although he recognised this was an 
increasing trend.

He spent considerable time on the 'Nature' developments in the 
collection of data, the importance of grey literature, blogs, 
wikis and the need for high value content to be recognised. He 
pondered whether quality blog commentators could be enshrined in 
evaluative value systems (but if RAEs and RQFs are going to adopt 
largely conservative metrics this may not be likely in the short 
term?)

He noted that perhaps the NIH is "not sure what it is there for 
in terms of databases". This support of data collection and the 
need for its acceptance within the scientific process was in some 
contrast to his implicit acceptance of the status quo of the STM 
market- "I'm not sure what 'Nature' can do to impact on the big 
STM publishers" - a sotto voce from a librarian at the back said 
"don't keep increasing 'Nature's' pricing models"! He did state 
later "that it was up to librarians to cancel journals from high 
cost publishers".

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It is interesting in this context that the UK Bookseller of 
November 25th, quoted in 'The Guardian', reports as follows

"Families should stick together. That seems to be the logic 
behind academic publishing's latest mega-deal, the sale of 
Blackwell Publishing to John Wiley & Sons. Both are family 
companies founded in the 19th century (although Blackwell has 
hardly been the happiest of clans in the recent years); both have 
built vast journal and book lists spanning scientific, technical 
and medical fields. And, crucially, both are facing the challenge 
of the digital era, with academics and professionals increasingly 
accessing information online.

"That means major investment or the threat of being swallowed by 
an even larger conglomerate. New York-based Wiley has forked out 
572 million pounds for Oxford's Blackwell - more than twice what 
Hachette paid for Time Warner Book Group earlier this year. The 
price is so high because businesses like Blackwell have 
dependable revenues - its 835 journals are subscribed into 
libraries and societies years in advance, while its 600 new books 
a year have guaranteed readerships. Its profit margins are 
unimaginable to those publishers who depend on chance and 
troubled bookshops. Yet ironically the deal may enable the 
continued survival of some bookshops."

Universities,research institutions and their libraries thus 
provide the safe underpinning of such "dependable revenues"

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Colin Steele
Emeritus Fellow
The Australian National University
Canberra  ACT 0200
Australia
Email: colin.steele@anu.edu.au