Open Peer Review to Save the World

OPEN Peer Review to save the worldMichael Taylor (PhD, CPhys)

National Observatory of AthensPatternizer AT gmail.com

alpha @libreapp

Peer review… to save the world??!

• As we move toward a Type I civilization our socio-economic world is getting more global & interconnected…

Type I — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power P available on a single planet (Pearth ≈ 1.7 ×1017 W)

Type II — a civilization capable of harnessing the luminosity of its own star (Psun ≈ 3.9 ×1026 W)

Type III — a civilization with access to energy on the scale of the luminosity of its own galaxy (Pmilky way ≈ 4 ×1037 W)

𝐾=𝑙𝑜𝑔10 𝑃−6

10

Kardashev, Nikolai (1964) Soviet Astronomy 8: 217Sagan (1973) Cosmic Connection.

Cambridge Press, ISBN 0-521-78303-8

…meaning that systemic impacts are more macroscopic

MICHAEL TAYLOR / openscholar.org.uk / @libreapp / [email protected]

Modern impacts & threats are they just tabloid science ?!


The Journal Publishing Model made us think...


openscholar.org.uk

We got together with others to test new models

108 volunteers from 17 countries


LIBRE = LIBerating REsearch but from what exactly?!

• PUBLICATION DELAYS slow processes & embargos• BARRIERS TO INFO paywall$• DEPENDENCE ON CITATION INDICES poor stats • COPYRIGHT LOSS no creative re-use (we need CC-

BY) • REJECTION RATES waste, curtail output & miss ops• RETRACTION RATES bad info stays in circulation• AUTHOR CHARGES knowledge divide• LOW VISIBILITY unindexed OA & “the long tail”• LIMITED PEER-REVIEW danger of bias with 2-3

people


Publication delays >8 months (even before any embargo)

Björk & Solomon (2013) Journal of Informetrics 7(4), 914-923.


Barriers to info paywall$ (and e.g. linguistic barriers)


Dependence on citation indices poor statistics


Copyright loss creates loss of creative re-use rights and OA


Rejection Rates cause submission cascades & waste time


Retraction Rates put lives at risk

Steen, R. G. (2011). Retractions in the medical literature: how many patients are put at risk by flawed research?. Journal of medical ethics, 37(11), 688-692.


Figure 2. Percentage of retractions vs. percentage of 2010 Web of Science records among 12 broad scholarly fields.

Retraction Rates may be an early warning bell about Gold OA

Grieneisen & Zhang M (2012) PLoS ONE 7(10): e44118.


Retraction Rates mean wrong info stays in circulation for years

Fang, Steen & Casadevall (2012) PNAS 109(42), 17028-17033.


Journal Peer Review is limited, left to trust and prone to bias


An ideal (journal-independent) model should be …

COOPERATIVE free & data-linkedFAST un-moderated & zero-embargo FAIR accessible, OA and persistentHONEST transparentINSPIRING social & credit-givingOBJECTIVE collectively wise & reproducibleINNOVATIVE open source


A new model the “Open Publication”

ARCHIVEDZERO-EMBARGO

OA REVISION+ LINKED DATA

+ OA PEER-REVIEW+ META-DATA STACK

=

“OPEN PUBLICATION”

INDEPENDENT PEER-REVIEW+ ANNOTATIONS

+ SOCIAL COMMENTARY

ARCHIVED ZERO-EMBARGO

OA ARTICLE+ LINKED DATA

PACKAGE+

DISSEMINATE

0-embargo OA repositories

LIBRE

AuthorsInstitutesAssociationsJournals

1

23

4

MICHAEL TAYLOR / openscholar.org.uk / @libreapp / patternizer @gmail.com

0-embargo OA repositories

LIBRE is our attempt at demonstrating independent peer-review







LIBRE is open source and we welcome your input at GitHub


www.openscholar.org.uk/independent-peer-review-initiative

Greece is the launchpad for the Independent Peer Review Initiative


Greece is in 12th position (1.13% of the top 1% cited articles EVER)


Greece has HUGE research output potential

Press WH (2013) What's So Special About Science (And How Much Should We Spend on It?). Science, 342(6160), 817-822.


Greece is VERY active & innovative in OA


Beckett, C., & Inger, S. (2006). Self-archiving and journal subscriptions: co-existence or competition. Publishing Research Consortium: PRC Summary Papers, 2.

It’s important to ask librarians what do they really want


So, can (independent) Peer Review save the world MAYBE

Björk, Bo-Christer et al (2009) PloS one 5.6: e11273.

Gargouri & Harnad (2010) Eprints: August 28. 2010

HELP US TO MANDATE IPRAT OA REPOSITORIES



Inspired by the essay…

Many thanks for your thoughts