I’ve been without an academic affiliation for close to a year now, an experience that’s given me a new appreciation for open acess journals. I still receive tables of contents for Nature and Science via e-mail, but I’ve given up reading them since I can’t get past the abstract page of the articles. For now, I learn about scientific breakthroughs much the same way as the general public does: from online newspapers and magazines, blogs and Twitter.
Yet I am still writing papers and submitting them for publication – so with my new perspective I am re-considering where I send those papers. The old model, in an ideal case, went something like: (1) Choose the journal with the highest impact factor, (2) Get lucky, pull strings, whatever it takes – I don’t actually know – and get your paper accepted by your first choice journal, (3) The mainstream media picks up your story and spreads a distorted, “sexy” version of the findings. Would I like Science or Nature to publish my best work? I won’t lie. Yes, it would be nice to get that kind of exposure. Will I be devastated if they don’t? No. Should publication in these journals be a prerequisite to finding a tenure-track job? Absolutely not. Is there a better way of defining the impact of your research? Definitely. Start with the Alt-Metrics Manifesto if you don’t believe me.
Here’s what I notice about papers written for open access journals: They are so very readable. The authors (and editors) consider their expanded audience. Look at any paper in a PLoS journal and you will see: What they did, how they did it, and why, all clearly stated at the top of the paper. The typical Science or Nature paper is dense with jargon and light on explanation, because the authors assume readers will be members of the field and that everyone else will read the press release. The situation has nominally improved with the introduction of (optional) supplementary electronic material, but overall the format provides lots of incentive for overstating conclusions and under-reporting evidence.
While I wait for an open access publishing nirvana, I take heart in the fact that peer review is no longer limited to two or three researchers chosen by an editor who may or may not know anything about the science at hand. The recent arsenic-eating-bacteria story was a great reminder that, more and more, peer review is happening immediately and publicly. No longer do we have to wait a year for a new paper, or for an editor-approved letter of rebuttal. Even more exciting in this case, the mainstream media picked up on the backlash and reported it. In this paradigm, it doesn’t matter so much where I publish a paper, just that I get it out there. The quality will be reflected in the post-publication reactions, rather than pre-determined by the anonymous few.
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Thanks for sharing your reading experience. I’d always thought of the journals as more open in terms of accessibility but hadn’t thought too much about differences in reader experience. You’ve mentioned both but do you find that it is mostly the percentage jargon that is different or is it more the clarity of the outline and the connectors used to illustrate the logic of the paper?
[...] was just reading an interesting comment by Anne Peattie about her experiences with non-open access literature. She raises the point that, out of a direct academic circle, she is unable to access most [...]
[...] My open access conversion – “…papers written for open access journals: They are so very readable!” I predicted this years ago (I can search and find the old blog post if asked nicely in the comments). [...]
mcshanahan: What strikes me is the difference in tone. To use myself as an example, when I write a journal article, I am assuming that a few people in my field will read it, and everyone else will find it irrelevant, so I don’t need to explain much. No matter who reads it, I get to list it on my CV, which arguably far more people see than the journal articles, so I want those citations to look impressive! That thinking has always dictated my journal choice.
Theoretically, one could write an open access paper the same way, but I imagine there is both self-selection in the authors who submit to open access journals and some gentle editorial pressure to take into account their wider audience and write in “plain English”. When I skim the table of contents of PLoS ONE I feel like I’m in college again, and everything is interesting. I don’t want to pick on anyone, but when I see a title like “A lower limit of Δz>0.06 for the duration of the reionization epoch”, well, I take the hint and move on. I am not the target audience for that paper.
Anne – Thanks for pointing out the interpersonal side of interpreting the language. Your perspective is really interesting.
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