Making Open the Default

Björn BrembsUniversität Regensburg

http://brembs.net - @brembs

SCHOLARSHIP

Scientists produce publications, data and code

PROBLEM I

Dysfunctional scholarly literature

Antiquated Functionality• Limited access• No scientific impact

analysis• Lousy peer-review • No global search• No functional hyperlinks• Useless data visualization• No submission standards• (Almost) no statistics• No content-mining• No effective way to sort,

filter and discover• No networking feature• etc.

…it’s like the web in 1995!

PROBLEM II

Scientific data in peril

Small Data – Long Tail

Report on Integration of Data and Publications, ODE Report 2011http://www.alliancepermanentaccess.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=ODE+Report+on+Integration+of+Data+and+Publications

PROBLEM III

Non-existent software archives

UNIVAC (A-2) 1953

Today‘s Institutional Dystopia

• Email• Webspace• Blog• Library access card• ‘Green’ OA repository

• No archiving of publications• No archiving of code• No archiving of data

How bad is it?

575+ solutions and counting…

How bad is it really?

Only the best publish in high-ranking journals

Main Problems with the IF• Negotiable • Irreproducible • Mathematically

unsoundBrembs, B., Button, K., & Munafò, M. (2013). Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291

OUR JOURNALS

Is journal prestige like astrology?

Journal Rank and Citations

The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers' citations in the digital age (2012): George A. Lozano, Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras arXiv:1205.4328

Journal Rank and Methodology I

Macleod MR, et al. (2015) Risk of Bias in Reports of In Vivo Research: A Focus for Improvement. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002273

Journal Rank and Methodology II

Brembs, B., Button, K., & Munafò, M. (2013). Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291

Journal Rank and Experimental Design

Munafò, M., Stothart, G., & Flint, J. (2009). Bias in genetic association studies and impact factor DOI: 10.1038/mp.2008.77

Journal Rank and Quality

Brown, E. N., & Ramaswamy, S. (2007). Quality of protein crystal structures. doi:10.1107/S0907444907033847

INCENTIVES

“High-Impact” journals attract the most unreliable research

Journal Rank and Fraud/Error

Fang et al. (2012): Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212247109

Journal Rank and Retractions

Data from: Fang, F., & Casadevall, A. (2011). RETRACTED SCIENCE AND THE RETRACTION INDEX DOI: 10.1128/IAI.05661-11

Retractions on the Rise

2005

2013

2013

“Do you trust scientists?”

THAT‘S HOW BAD IT IS

The disaster that is our digital infrastructure

Access?

WHAT NOW?

Save time and money by making science open by default as an added benefit

OPEN SCIENCE

Effortless, low-risk and by default

Software to control the experiment and save the data

Software to analyze and visualize the data

GitHub

Scientific Code with Persistent Identifiers

Y O U

Bewerbungshinweise

Bewerbungshinweise

Publikationstätigkeit(vollständige Publikationsliste, darunter Originalarbeiten als Erstautor/in, Seniorautor/in, Impact-Punkte insgesamt und in den letzten 5 Jahren, darunter jeweils gesondert ausgewiesen als Erst- und Seniorautor/in, persönlicher Scientific Citations Index (SCI, h-Index nach Web of Science) über alle Arbeiten)

Publications:Complete list of publications, including original research papers as first author, senior author, impact points total and in the last 5 years, with marked first and last-authorships, personal Scientific Citations Index (SCI, h-Index according to Web of Science) for all publications.

What can ECRs do right now?

1) Publish in the “Journal of Unreliable Research” of your field – or take your chances#getyourGlam

What can ECRs do right now?

2) Publish everything else where publication is quick and where it can be widely read#dontwastetimepublishing

What can ECRs do right now?

3) Ask your PI what will happen to all the work you put into your code & data and how you can get as many people as possible to use it#openscience

What can ECRs do right now?

1. #getyourGlam2. #dontwastetimepublishing3. #openscience4. #wearyouropenonyoursleeve

Potential for Innovation

(Sources: Van Noorden, R. (2013). Open access: The true cost of science publishing. doi:10.1038/495426a, Packer, A. L. (2010). The SciELO Open Access: A Gold Way from the South. Can. J. High. Educ. 39, 111–126)

Potential for innovation: 9.8b p.a.

Cost

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Legacy SciELO

1. International Coordination

2. Cancel all subscriptions

3. Implement current technology

INFRASTRUCTURE

Scientific source code

INFRASTRUCTURE

Research data

INFRASTRUCTURE

Narrative

The square traversal process has been the foundation of scholarly

communication for nearly 400 years!