Since the first scientific journals in 1665, owned by Denis de Sallo and Henry Oldenburg, the communicating landscape has experienced a strong evolution: in 2012 there were 28.000 active journals and 1,8 million articles published. These changes have been one consequence of the digital revolution, which was the subject of the talk given by Claude Kirchner at the Center of Mathematical Modeling (CMM) on 21th August 2014.
“As scientists we are not sure we are putting the right information in the right place”, explained Kirchner, who is the chief executive officer for science and technology of the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria, because its acronyms in French language).
Among the main transformations presented in his talk, it was included the emergence of overlay or epi journals, which are built over public archives like HAL or arXiv. They work on the main principle to identify independently publication (on the public archive) and qualification (by a given journal).
This kind of journals follows this working flow: the user uploads his/her paper on the public archive, where it becomes immediately publicly accessible. Then he/she can submit the paper through an evaluation platform to an editorial board who reads and possibly accepts the paper for the journal. In the later case, the paper is then labeled by the public archive as accepted.
Kirchner explained why the use of overlay journals could allow researchers to publish at minimal cost without necessarily involving commercial publishers. This new situation raises challenges like “getting quality platforms and making science an open process”, summarized Kirchner. He pointed out that in this “moving landscape, involvement of scientists is essential and academic bodies shall become more responsible of their scientific information policies”. He added that we are also possibly heading towards models allowing for open peer-review, which publicly identifies the reviewer, and data journals, with notes and programs that could benefit from and to the qualification process.
During his talk, the audience asked about the funding of overlay journals. Andrés Aravena, researcher at CMM, highlighted this scheme brings a “change of the business model. It requires time investment for the board committee´s referrers. In France it could work, but I wonder if it is sustainable in countries where the state does not provide economical assistance for these options”.
Kirchner´s questions, like who owns the new data collected, who asserts the quality of the platforms or who validates the relationship between the platforms and the archives, bring important issues still to be solved. However, we cannot ignore them, since they are shaping the future of the science.
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