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A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences

Science advances through rich, scholarly discussion. More than ever before, digital tools allow us to take that dialogue online. To chart a new future for open publishing, we must consider alternatives to the core features of the legacy print publishing system, such as an access paywall and editoria...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Stern, Bodo M., O’Shea, Erin K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6372143/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30753179
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000116
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author Stern, Bodo M.
O’Shea, Erin K.
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O’Shea, Erin K.
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description Science advances through rich, scholarly discussion. More than ever before, digital tools allow us to take that dialogue online. To chart a new future for open publishing, we must consider alternatives to the core features of the legacy print publishing system, such as an access paywall and editorial selection before publication. Although journals have their strengths, the traditional approach of selecting articles before publication (“curate first, publish second”) forces a focus on “getting into the right journals,” which can delay dissemination of scientific work, create opportunity costs for pushing science forward, and promote undesirable behaviors among scientists and the institutions that evaluate them. We believe that a “publish first, curate second” approach with the following features would be a strong alternative: authors decide when and what to publish; peer review reports are published, either anonymously or with attribution; and curation occurs after publication, incorporating community feedback and expert judgment to select articles for target audiences and to evaluate whether scientific work has stood the test of time. These proposed changes could optimize publishing practices for the digital age, emphasizing transparency, peer-mediated improvement, and post-publication appraisal of scientific articles.
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spelling pubmed-63721432019-03-01 A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences Stern, Bodo M. O’Shea, Erin K. PLoS Biol Perspective Science advances through rich, scholarly discussion. More than ever before, digital tools allow us to take that dialogue online. To chart a new future for open publishing, we must consider alternatives to the core features of the legacy print publishing system, such as an access paywall and editorial selection before publication. Although journals have their strengths, the traditional approach of selecting articles before publication (“curate first, publish second”) forces a focus on “getting into the right journals,” which can delay dissemination of scientific work, create opportunity costs for pushing science forward, and promote undesirable behaviors among scientists and the institutions that evaluate them. We believe that a “publish first, curate second” approach with the following features would be a strong alternative: authors decide when and what to publish; peer review reports are published, either anonymously or with attribution; and curation occurs after publication, incorporating community feedback and expert judgment to select articles for target audiences and to evaluate whether scientific work has stood the test of time. These proposed changes could optimize publishing practices for the digital age, emphasizing transparency, peer-mediated improvement, and post-publication appraisal of scientific articles. Public Library of Science 2019-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6372143/ /pubmed/30753179 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000116 Text en © 2019 Stern, O’Shea http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Perspective
Stern, Bodo M.
O’Shea, Erin K.
A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
title A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
title_full A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
title_fullStr A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
title_full_unstemmed A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
title_short A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
title_sort proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6372143/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30753179
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000116
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