This year I’ve been thinking a lot about academic publishing: the process, access, and rights, the built-in delays. If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’ve had two articles published this year in peer-reviewed academic journals (see here and here). While I’m proud and excited to have been able to get my articles published, it’s also led me to contemplate some things that aren’t ideal about the current world of academic publishing.
Some background
Academic journal publication may be open-access or subscription-based. With open-access publishing, the article is available for free online to any reader. While this sounds fabulous for everyone—readers read for free! more people see my article!—the expenses of operating such journals are payed for using publication fees. That means that the authors of the paper have paid a fee to the publisher—from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, from what I’ve seen—in order to submit their article. For those working for institutions, these fees may be paid for by the institution. For grant-funded studies, grantors may pay the fees. For those of us doing research on our own, these fees are a substantial barrier.
There has been a proliferation of open access journals with the internet, and credibility varies from highly reputable to highly questionable. A sting by Science Magazine several years ago revealed some serious lack of review at many (though not all) of these new journals. So while publication in a reputable peer-reviewed journal (whether open access or subscription) lends real credibility, publication in a similar-looking but sketchier journal doesn’t actually add any value or legitimacy to the content.
For subscription journals, the process is free to the authors, since the cost of publication is paid by the subscribers. The problem then becomes providing access to all the people who would be interested in or would benefit from reading the article. Different subscription content journals have different rules about how articles may be shared. In some journals like Anthrozoös, authors are allowed to publish the accepted version (not the formatted, final version) of the manuscript on their own website (as I did) or academic repository and share a limited number of free links to the article. In other journals like JAVMA, the subscription-only content is much more restricted and any sharing requires permission.
The Delays
There can be quite a delay in getting research published in subscription academic journals. Open access journals generally have faster times to publication, perhaps because their online-only format is not space restricted, and no hard-copy printing and distribution system is needed. The delay in getting research published can mean that data may be out of date and useful findings are withheld from readers, perhaps even for years. “Years” may sound extreme, but it took 2 years 4 months after submission—1 year and 8 months after acceptance— before our JAVMA study was finally published last month. From what I understand this may not be unusual for subscription academic journal articles.
What’s missing from “the literature”
Every good research publication tells a story, and every research study collects data that may be interesting but are tangential to the story. Perhaps data are collected as a step in an eligibility and randomization process or as background information, or surveys contain fields that are never analyzed. Comparisons that could be made aren’t. Information that exists is never shared.
And what about quick, small studies? Student research, or small independent surveys? When do these ever see the light of day?
What if there was a place where we could publish those bits and pieces*, the small studies, the “spin off” version of the main show? Someplace without the expense or delay of current academic publishing, where the research may just be interesting if not always deeply meaningful or revolutionary. Or, if not a single place or site, then a new standard convention of academic knowledge-sharing.
And so I have created: the Journal of Incidental Findings and Freelance Inquiry (JIFFI), an imaginary publication that exists right here. It is fast and free, reviewed by my peers after publication. No study too small or scope too narrow. (Also, it took me an entire morning of cat spays to come up with that journal name and acronym)
Of course the internet is a place with massive quantities of buyer-beware information – but is that any worse than never-shared information moldering on a floppy disk? Or for that matter, expensive publication in a sketchy/ poorly run open access journal? It seems to me that getting information out there is more valuable than waiting to figure out a more “legitimate” forum in which to publish.
In that vein, I will be aiming to use this space to publish some of the previously unpublished bits and pieces that I think could be helpful to some people. Some of my previous posts, such as Surgery Packs and Suture in HQHVSN would “qualify” for JIFFI as well, and I’ll create a tag and category for these posts on this site.
I’d love to see other people who do research, whether formally or informally, get their small or incidental results out there for others to use too.
*Credit for the initial idea of a journal that would publish these “other” findings goes to my recent co-authors Jan Scarlett and Julie Levy, from a conversation in early 2016 as we were preparing the final version of our recently published JAVMA study.
