One of the largest science funders, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will cease paying journal “article processing charges” and instead asks funded researchers to publish their work as preprints. This is fantastic. The costs of the current publishing system drain research funds and exclude too many scientists solely due to financial constraints. Funders are in a much better position to rock the “publishing” boat than researchers.
https://gatesfoundationoa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/24810787662100-Policy-Refresh-2025-Overview
@johannes_lehmann I mean, yeah, this sounds good, but for the fact that several researchers depend on getting published in "those journals" for promotion and tenure (where it still exists). This is a disadvantage to those individuals to that until pre-prints are acknowledged in this process.
@adamhsparks @johannes_lehmann The problem with this type of issues is that you can't change things while keeping the status quo. Things need to change in academia. Number (as opposed to quality) of publications and impact factor are terrible ways of assessing whether someone should be promoted. There is so much more that should be assessed!
Quality of research, teaching, supervision of students, grants, engagement with the academic community/citizenship, engagement with the public and other research stakeholders, *real* commitment to open and reproducible research, and probably more!
This obviously requires people with power (e.g. those on promotion boards or funders) to change their mindset, but it also requires everyone to showcase, be proud and put effort towards their good practices, so that others start seeing the value in them and adopt them until they're widespread.
Things are slowly changing, but there is a lot of resistance, even in places that should be more "enlightened". The stark reality is that currently universities are run as businesses, and that is bad (I was recently asked if some research I'm doing is business critical. I don't know how I kept my cool.)
@adamhsparks @johannes_lehmann I didn't mean it like that. As I said, change needs to come from the powers that be.
However, they won't change their mind unless there is some tangible evidence that those other things are important and that people are and want to be invested in them. This is about having your voice heard, and lobbying for changes to happen. I do agree that it's definitely harder for someone in a temporary position to do this, I know, I've been there and I'm not suggesting those people should do this alone; however academics who are beyond that point but maybe not at the top (I would consider myself as one) could lead by example and grassroot groups can lead change. That can be a very small step like "ok boss we're aiming for Nature (dream on) but in the meantime this goes to BiorXiv" or "we're putting this code on GitHub with a GPL licence and deposit our data for everyone to inspect" etc. This is hopefully followed by the realisation that those papers get cited, those data bring collaborations and so on. This is obviously only one small aspect of it, but you need to start somewhere
@nicolaromano @johannes_lehmann Agree! I’m here for this and do just those things.
@adamhsparks @nicolaromano
You are right that researchers have to push change, also to mitigate risks for early career scientists. Here in the Netherlands (at my uni in particular) there is a movement away from broken metrics (“recognition and rewards”). Yet academia is an interconnected system which limits first moves - those “in power” professors are bound by the responsibilities for their mentees. Change is glacial, publishers exploit that. Funders are at more liberty to rock the boat.
@nicolaromano @johannes_lehmann I don't disagree that we can't keep the status quo. I'm not defending it. But asking those that are most vulnerable to make the changes is hard for me to swallow. How do we effect this change so that it's a positive impact and doesn't have negative effects on post-docs and other early and mid-career researchers is my question.