Boycott Nature and Science!
On Tuesday Randy Schekman, joint winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine hit out at academic publishers for the way the most “prestigious” journals (specifically Cell, Nature and Science) publish only the “flashiest” research. I see his announcement as part of a groundswell of opinion that scientists are being increasingly pressured to worry more about the impact factors of the journals they publish in than about the actual science that they do. Cynics have been quick to point out that his statements have emerged only after he received the Nobel Prize, and that it’s difficult for younger researchers who have to build their careers in a world to break free from the metrics that are strangling many disciplines. I feel, as do some of my colleagues (such as Garret Cotter of Oxford University), that it’s time for established researchers to make a stand and turn away from those publishers that we feel are having a negative impact on science and instead go for alternative modes of publication that are in better keeping with the spirit of open science.
In future, therefore, I’ll be boycotting Nature and Science (I don’t publish in Cell anyway) and I call upon my colleagues to do likewise. Here’s a nice logo (courtesy of Garrett Cotter) that you might find useful should you wish to support the boycott.
ps. For the record I should point out that during my career I have published four papers in Nature and one in Science.
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In the Dark 
December 11, 2013 at 2:26 pm
I’m less concerned about the hypocrisy angle- people can change their minds particularly when reflecting back along a career- but I felt Schekman’s piece was more a thinly disguised advert for the OA journal he now edits. Lots of reasons to support OA journals, but I’m not convinced that a completely OA publishing system will eliminate the impact factor or the fight to publish in “premium” journals.
December 11, 2013 at 5:26 pm
We are in transition, and *some* form of pecking order is bound to emerge among OA journals; all that is unclear is how.
December 11, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Peter – I do agree that obsession with metrics and the pressure for impact has negative effects, but I don’t see these journals as *causing* that trend. It comes from Government, pure and simple. I have a lot of sympathy for your related campaign concerning journals charging University libraries money for old rope, and your open access initiative is very exciting. But I think you are off target this time. I do think we have to push for open access, but if you think it will make any difference to the bureaucratic pressure on our daily lives, dream on.
December 11, 2013 at 11:56 pm
Peter,
I have a lot of sympathy for your stance, not least because I’ve been involved over the last year in a rather fractious debate about some shockingly poor quality research which has been published in NPG journals . In that case, it’s clear that, as Schekman points out, the newsworthiness of the “discovery” far outweighed the issue of scientific rigour when the work was selected for publication. (This is not to say, of course, that some truly ground-breaking work isn’t published in Nature and Science).
As you know, I’m also not a fan of impact factors
But the problem with the boycott, as I see it, is as follows. Many very talented postdocs and PhD students work in the group here in Nottingham. I have a duty of care to them in terms of ensuring the best possible career opportunities (and quite a few of them are focused on a career in academia). Unfortunately, this means that they have to aim for publications in the very journals Scheckman and yourself, amongst others, are boycotting.
If the boycott were “universal” – i.e. all academics sign up to it, then great. Call me overly cynical, if you like, but I suspect that this ain’t going to happen. Indeed, for quite a few academics the reaction to a boycott of Nature and Science will most likely be “Great, that means there’s a better chance of my work being published there”. The Nature/Science “brand” is exceptionally well-established.
You can argue, of course, that if we don’t make a stand, nothing will change. I agree (and I boycott submission and review of research council proposals for this reason). But I remain unconvinced that hiring committees and fellowship panels will lose their commitment to the Nature/Science brand as a result of this boycott. And until they do, I really don’t want to jeopardise the careers of young researchers.
December 12, 2013 at 11:40 am
I hadn’t heard that stripey story. It reminds me of N-rays, except that on that occasion Nature published a paper claiming that an experimentally observed effect was an artifact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-rays
The stripes story as presented is all about papers published. We all know, however, that preliminary results are often presented at conferences and critiqued there in Q&A at the end of a talk, then over coffee afterwards. Likewise conferences are forums (older than blogs, and also collective) where published results can be discussed informally; was there a buzz at conferences post-publication that the stripes were an artifact, and was this concern made known to any of the involved scientists or journal editors who attended?
December 12, 2013 at 11:55 am
Anton,
Skepticism about the stripes is widespread – see, for example, this comment.
What I find remarkable is that instrumental artefacts, coupled with an “unorthodox” approach to image analysis and interpretation, and strong observer bias, have made it past peer reviewers time and time again to be published in some of the most prestigious journals in science. We’re about to submit a paper which critiques all of the data. My confidence in peer review has been severely damaged by this stripy nanoparticle saga.
Peter has blogged before about how the eye can be fooled into perceiving spatial correlations in Poisson point patterns . There’s a great example of this in the stripy nanoparticle literature.
Philip
December 12, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Yes, NPG comes out better out of the N-rays fascinating story than out of the stripy one (we are not out yet)…
December 12, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Nobody who remembers 1960s TV sets and the lines that frequently ran across them would publish that stuff without first performing some very stringent checks that do not appear to have been done in this case.
December 12, 2013 at 5:31 pm
In fairness, peer review might well have raised an “Are you sure this isn’t an artifact?” Only three people would know if that happened, and how many of them would tell? The problem is not so much peer review but what to do after something gets published that’s wrong. I tentatively suggest that bodies like the IoP might play a role.
Meanwhile, there’s the Journal of Irreproducible Results…
December 12, 2013 at 8:04 pm
Philip,
I’ve just realised that you thought at 1155 that I was doubtful the stripes were an artifact. I was instantly convinced that they were an artifact upon reading the links you provided; I was (and remain) interested in what went on at conferences in that field around the time of publication, particularly conferences attended by members of the group which claimed new physics.
December 12, 2013 at 4:59 pm
We have to embrace new modes of publishing and new modes of post peer review evaluation. We have to change the incentives in the career structure. I would argue that this is also a duty we have towards our young researchers (as well as to the wider public that fund our research).
Schekman’s move was useful because it has sparked the discussion and broadened it outside of a growing but still some circle of scientists interested in these issues. As Stephen Curry puts it, now, “journals and researchers must respond to Schekman’s move “.
But I would not call it a boycott. A boycott is a much more organized and well-defined political tool. It is also a very blunt tool; it does not allow nuance. Still, it must have an end point and clear demands that must be satisfied. What are the criteria to be boycotted and what do the targeted journals have to do to become part of a more acceptable list again? Why CNS and not many other journals? I note that Schekman does not call it a boycott. He just says, there are other options and in the future, he’ll use those.
I have not published in any of those so me calling for a boycott (or stating that I won’t publish there) could be easily ridiculed (just like Schekman was ridiculed for this call after having published many papers there). All I would say is that even if I have spectacular results, I think it is unlikely that I will be tempted to publish there. Arsenic life, stripy controversy, and a few other things that can be found at pubpeer -together with the (r)evolution of scientific publishing- have seriously damped my enthusiasm for these flashy journals.
December 12, 2013 at 2:51 pm
I agree that there are predatory practices in academic publishing, a lack of competition, monopolisation and abuse which in any other area would attract attention from the office of fair trading. The publishers are there to separate scientists from their money. But I have no problem with Nature and Science. Nature clearly aims for public impact, not for disseminating science (who reads old Nature papers?) – Science is a bit more focussed (and in my experience, offers more specialist refereeing). We publish in Nature or Science by choice – we have alternatives. Science does not, I believe, offer open access so cannot be criticised for fleecing us for that either.. (subscription is not cheap, though).
March 10, 2014 at 11:27 am
[…] For very similar reasons I can’t, in all conscience, commit to the Schekman boycott of Nature, Science. See this comment for more detail:https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/boycott-nature-and-science/#comment-77820 […]