Randy Schekman denounces the fact that scientists pay attention to where they publish their results. A commentary.
Scientific publishing is a very academic subject that nobody outside the research system takes much interest in. Yet the problems of current publishing practice have far-reaching implications for the science of the future and thus for global society.
One important question was raised again and again at the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: how, as a scientist, do you best bring your own results to the public?
"The content of your work counts, not the name of the journal" was stressed by several laureates during their lectures and is really an encouraging message to young scientists. This advice draws directly on the laureates' own experience. Many published their ultimately world-changing results in relatively unknown journals. Some had trouble publishing their results at all, most notably Barry Marshall, who identified the bacterium Helicobacter pylori as the cause of stomach ulcers and whose results were initially rejected by the journals. Aaron Ciechanover, too, had to publish his ultimately prize-winning results in a relatively unknown journal (BBRC). Jean-Marie Lehn even published his most important work in French – in a journal nobody here has ever heard of.
Why is the name of the journal a matter for discussion at all? Most scientists try to get into a handful of coveted journals. These journals confine themselves to spectacular results that appear to have far-reaching consequences. This creates incredible pressure on researchers, which in recent years has probably led to an increase in fraud and other scientific misconduct. Randy Schekman (Nobel Prize in Physiology 2013) explains this grievance in the second half of his lecture (from minute 22).
As he explains, how coveted a journal is rests on the "impact factor", which relates the number of citations to a journal to the number of articles published in it. From this, the company Thomson Reuters calculates long tables and sorts the journals into a hierarchy. The factor calculated for the journal ultimately affects the "value" of one's own publication. The impact factor was conceived in the 1970s by the librarian Eugene Garfield in order to take his scientists' reading habits into account when purchasing journals. It is, however, highly controversial and is regarded by many as completely unsuitable for assessing the quality of individual papers, let alone scientists. The journal hierarchy is an illusion.
Unfortunately, only few people know this, and so in practice it does matter where you publish. If a young scientist has no paper in a journal with a high impact factor, that often means the end of a scientific career: they do not get a position in the lab they want, or a grant application is rejected.
Schekman proposes two approaches to solving the problem. First, one should speak out publicly against the use of the impact factor. He himself did so at the meeting with great emphasis. This can also be done within the framework of the DORA initiative, which is devoted to exactly that. The problem with this proposal is that speaking out against the impact factor is not enough on its own. A change in thinking has to take place, and above all, alternatives have to be found. There are no good solutions here yet.
As a second way out, Schekman suggests publishing in his new journal eLife. eLife is financed by public funders and foundations and is meant to compete with the commercial top dogs Nature, Science and Cell. Unfortunately, eLife will not solve the problem, because like the big ones it selects for spectacular results and thus sets the same incentives for scientific misconduct. It is also reserved for the life sciences.
Kurt Wüthrich (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2002) said: "We first had to learn that it makes a difference whether you publish in FEBS Letters or in Nature." That is where we need to get back to. The content counts, not the label.
Automatically translated with Claude.