Paleontology Journals - Cheers and Jeers

In my previous post, I introduced a compilation of data concerning various journals relevant to paleontologists. The data, which are freely available in Google Spreadsheet, Excel and HTML form, detail costs to readers, costs to authors, and more. In this post, I want to outline my personal opinions on the journals that I surveyed. Which have good policies for authors and readers, and which need some work? The answers may surprise you; they certainly surprised me. Some of the best-known journals in the field are not necessarily the best for those who need to use them.

A disclaimer: The opinions presented here are my own and do not represent any organization with which I am associated. Any critical comments are directed at the publishing practices of the journals, not the quality of the science or the efforts of the volunteer editors, authors, and reviewers. If I have made an error in compiling a journal information, I will happily correct it upon notification and verification. I have published in, and in some cases will continue to publish in, some of the journals of which I am critical. Although I personally would like to publish only in open access, non-profit journals, the realities of a career in science make that difficult at times.

Cheers to:

• Journals that promote open access. Even with a delay, open access allows an increased readership (and hopefully increased citation) of articles. Although critics of OA often imply that scientific papers are just too complex for the lay public to understand, in a field like paleontology the lay public is a major consumer of our primary literature. So, cheers to journals like PLoS ONE, Palaeontologia Electronica, and Proceedings B, who practice and promote open access. Even some commercially-published journals (e.g., The Anatomical Record) deserve special mention for their OA efforts.
• Journals with reasonable download fees. Although every journal would be free and open access in an ideal world, it does cost money to run a publication. I salute those journals of various sizes and business models that keep their per-article download charges at $15 or less; this includes Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Journal of Paleontology, Paleobiology, PNAS, and Science. Here's your next challenge, journals: lower the price to $5. I would predict that this is the tipping point in the balance between price and convenience for many readers of the paleontology literature.
  

Jeers to:

• Journals that charge ridiculous fees for per-article downloads. I'm especially looking at you, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. $41 for a PDF of a one page taxonomic note?! Not even Cretaceous Research, owned and published by the oft-maligned Elsevier, charges that much ($37.95). Somehow or another, Journal of Paleontology only charges $12 per article. I realize that different journals have different goals and revenue streams, but it is absolutely unseemly that a society journal like JVP charges that much for its articles. One wonders how many potential purchases (and thus society revenue) are lost in the face of the fee.
• Journals that only allow authors to publish the pre-peer reviewed version of a manuscript. Journal of Morphology and The Anatomical Record get this dubious honor. I can understand asking authors to delay posting the unformatted manuscript or to refrain from posting the published PDF (to allow the journal to recoup some revenue), but it makes no sense to prevent entirely the authors from posting the peer-reviewed, unformatted version. Given the sometimes substantial changes introduced during peer review (which is done by volunteers, and nearly always coordinated by volunteer editors), posting of an unreviewed manuscript has too much potential for making the author as well as the journal look bad. The Journal of Morphology is a particularly egregious offender. I feel a little bad listing The Anatomical Record in this category, because they do have default OA after one year.
• Journals that lock supplementary information behind paywalls. Erecting paywalls for supplementary information may, in some cases, keep the data out of sight of legal readers. Someone who has only a paper reprint or PDF of the printed work legally obtained from the author, or a hard copy in the journal library, cannot access supplementary data. Keep in mind that most journals only minimally format the data, if at all, for publication, so there is no real value added by the publisher beyond posting it on the server. Prime offenders in this category include Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Historical Biology, and Cretaceous Research.
  

Top contenders in various categories:

• Most reader friendly. Criteria: Cost of download, time to OA. Top picks: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Palaeontologia Electronica, PLoS ONE, PalArch's JVP. Runners up: PNAS, Science.
• Least reader friendly. Criteria: cost of download, availability of supplementary information, availability of open access and/or author versions. Bottom picks: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Historical Biology, Cretaceous Research.
• Most author friendly. Criteria: OA fee and/or fee waiver, maintenance of author rights, impact factor. Top picks: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Palaeontologia Electronica. Good bets: PLoS ONE, PalArch's JVP.
• Best all-around journals: These journals balance needs of the author and reader, using the criteria above. In this case, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica and Palaeontologia Electronica are at the top of the list.
• Best Glamour Magazine: Science, by a long-shot. With the high impact factor that authors crave, and the low download fee and eventual open access that readers love, this journal has the entire package. PNAS is a very close runner-up.

*I would note that PaleoBios may be making some additional changes to propel themselves into the "best all-around journal" category; details will be added when available.
**I would also note that by "readers", I am referring to all possible readers, not just those with society memberships or at institutions with well-stocked electronic libraries.

So Now What?
Vote with your manuscript submissions. Submit only to journals whose policies benefit you. Encourage journals with non-friendly policies to change them. Although it may be tough to change strictly for-profit journals, we may be able to make a difference with society publications. Speak up. Blog about it. Talk to your colleagues. Ask the hard questions of the people who make the decisions. Make a noise at the annual meetings. Let's even the publishing playing field!

Update: Heinrich Mallison posted a nice response to the selection of Palaeontologia Electronica as one of the "best all-around journals" for paleontology, over at their official blog.

What are your thoughts? Weigh in with your own nominations for best/worst, or any additional opinions, in the comment section!

Paleontology Journals - Policies, Costs, and Accessibility

When preparing to submit a paper for publication, journal choice is critical. Numerous factors play into the decision (distribution, audience, accessibility, and cost, just to name a few), as has been outlined in wonderful detail elsewhere. As I advance in my own research career, publisher behavior has become more important to me. Does the publisher of the journal to which I am submitting my manuscript conduct its business in a manner consistent with my own personal ethics? Who will have access to my research, and how much will it cost them? This is a tough question to sort out, and in reality there are no perfect players. However, in order to make this decision just a little easier, I assembled data about a number of journals relevant to my own research program.

The full data are posted on a freely-accessible Google spreadsheet, and this post explains each of the categories I recorded. Although I have a personal bias towards open access, I have attempted to present the data in the spreadsheet without commentary. Every person will have his or her own opinion about which factors matter most to him or her. In a follow-up post, I will provide my own opinions on which journals are "best". For now, please make up your own mind.

Categories

• Title: self explanatory
• Publisher / Distributor: This category indicates which organization distributes the journal; this may be the same as the sponsor of the journal, or the work may be contracted to an outside organization.
• Publisher Status: Is the publisher a non-profit or for-profit entity? Some non-profit organizations publish their journals with a for-profit publisher, and some journals are purely non-profit or for-profit.
• Sponsor: As alluded to above, some journals are ultimately coordinated by a scientific society. I understand that some scientific societies receive a portion of the profits from the for-profit publishers, so a journal published by a for-profit entity may not always be a net loss for scientific funding. However, I would caution that no data are available on what percentage of revenue actually reverts to societies.
• OA (Open Access) Default: Some journals automatically post all articles as open access (either immediately or with a delay; indicated as "Yes" on the spreadsheet). Others have open access options only if the authors pay an extra fee (indicated as "No" on the spreadsheet).
• Time to OA: Some OA journals (e.g., PNAS) have closed access for a set period of time (usually one year), and then automatically open the archives.
• OA Fee & OA Fee Waiver: Most journals, even those that are not entirely OA, require a fee for open access. The fee varies from free (e.g., Acta Palaeontologica Polonica) to $3,250 (Historical Biology). In some cases (e.g., PLoS ONE) a fee waiver is available. For delayed OA journals (e.g., PNAS), the fee allows immediate OA posting of the article, rather than free OA after a set amount of time.
  
• Download Fee: Delayed OA or non-OA journals require that non-subscribers (or those who do not have institutional access) pay a per-article charge. Within paleontology-focused journals, the cheapest is Journal of Paleontology ($12), and the most expensive are Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and Historical Biology ($41).
• Free Supplementary Data: Increasingly, authors rely on supplementary data to publish and disseminate the measurements, cladistic tables, etc., supporting their papers. Most journals allow non-subscribers to access supplementary data; others (e.g., JVP and Cretaceous Research) require purchase of the entire article (even if the user already has obtained a legal copy as a physical reprint or PDF from the author).
• IF: The "Impact Factor", the most "standard" (if opaque) form of which is calculated by Thomson Reuters, is a measure of the extent to which the articles within a journal are cited. Although this metric is often criticized, it is still an important consideration for many authors, and is thus included here.
• Primarily Paleo?: In assembling this list, not all of the included journals are strictly paleontology-focused (e.g., Proceedings B, Nature). However, because they frequently include paleontology content, I felt it useful to include them.
• Author Rights: Publishers vary greatly in the rights that are left in the hands of the authors. Although copyright issues are certainly important (i.e., whether the copyright remains with the author, or is transferred to a commercial publisher or professional society), here I focused on what the authors are allowed to do with their own work in the context of a personal (or institutional) web page. In some cases, the authors may post the final published PDF; in others, the authors may only post the unformatted text. In the most restrictive case (as mandated by the journal Geology), authors are not allowed to post any version of the article.

All information was drawn from the official web pages for the various journals; any errors are unintentional but possible, due either to my own misinterpretation or updated journal policies. If you find any mistakes, please let me know, and I will do my best to correct them. This list is not intended to be exhaustive by any means; instead, it focuses on the journals of most personal interest.

See the Data:
To view the spreadsheet, you can see the freely-available Google Spreadsheet, or an Excel spreadsheet, or this web page.

Coming up: Which journals do I think deserve applause for their policies?

Interview: Ricardo Araújo on Journal of Paleontological Techniques

Fossil preparators are the unsung heroes of paleontology. For every paper on a spectacular Archaeopteryx skeleton, or an exquisite new ceratopsian skull, there is at least one talented preparator who freed the fossil from its rocky tomb. Despite the importance of preparators for paleontology, there are surprisingly few formal publications devoted to the trade (beyond the occasional symposium volume). Even rarer are open access publications on fossil preparation. Thus, it is a real pleasure to share this interview with Ricardo Araújo, the executive editor for Journal of Paleontological Techniques.

Tell us a little about Journal of Paleontological Techniques. How did the journal get started?
The Journal of Paleontological Techniques got started due to the difficulties that we felt in the Museu da Lourinha (in Portugal) to get access information relative to preparation. Unfortunately it is extremely hard for a peripheral country to have access to the know-how developed in the great centers of knowledge, namely central Europe and the US. So, we had to find an economical way without detriment of scientific rigor; publishing and editing articles using an open access philosophy seemed the right solution. Furthermore, the lack of a systematic compilation of paleontological techniques is evident in the literature.

What makes Journal of Paleontological Techniques unique?
There are a few things that make our journal unique:

1. There is no other journal focused on the practical side of paleontology. Some typical paleontological journals publish sporadically on paleontological techniques, and there are a handful of printed publications. However, there is an immense quantity of knowledge acquired by generations of preparators that is hard to access if you cannot go to the main conferences or workshops.
2. Also, preparation is practical in its essence. Thus, our papers can include videos and as many photos as necessary to make a technique easily perceptible. Most of the time it is difficult to express these techniques in words.
3. Our publications are edited in volumes. Each article is published by itself as a volume, which decreases the total amount of time for publication. This flexibility allows us, for example, to publish annals of congresses or symposia.
4. Our journal is totally open access and double-blind peer-reviewed. This doesn’t make our journal unique but certainly a “rare specimen.”

What advice would you give to authors who are interested in submitting their manuscripts to JPT?
Write! The preparation community is not used to writing about their findings, some of which are extremely important and can save thousands of euros for paleontological institutions. To spread paleontological techniques is to advance paleontology as a whole. Preparation is a science as well, in its most Popperian essence. To test and refute paleontological techniques is possible, and in fact, is done by all preparators everyday when we use different products, methods and tools, striving for the best way to do something efficiently.

What kind of difficulties, if any, have you encountered in editing JPT? How have these been solved?
When we embraced this project we quickly realized that the challenge was not to create the space to publish practical-paleontological ideas, but almost to change the status quo that preparators face nowadays. Institutions hire preparators to prepare fossils, not to write scientific articles. However, to my eyes, that is a rather limited view about the role of preparation. Preparation is the technical side of paleontology, and like any other science paleontology has its own methods—methods that are publishable. Actually, methods that are required to be published. Moreover, thinking strictly in an economic perspective, by spreading this sort of knowledge, preparator’s employers will quickly realize that they can save money by KNOWING and SHARING their knowledge.

In order to circumvent this problem, we are trying to present at as many events related to preparation as possible, not only to publicize the journal itself but also to spread the ideas behind it. We are part of mailing lists, groups of geosciences journals, and a gazillion things like that. For every preparation-related paleontological event that we know, we try to contact the organizers in order to publish the abstracts or edit a volume with selected papers. We are currently trying to organize an opinion paper that will be submitted in a mainstream paleontological journal, about the underestimation of the importance of preparation/paleontological techniques as a legitimate science. We recently got a wave of papers submitted, and hopefully it will be sustainable.

What has been the best part of editing a journal like JPT?
What I enjoy most about this project is actually the spirit of the journal and the challenge it represents. I believe the actual scenario is difficult, but not impossible to surpass. Ideally we would like to get help and cooperation from various areas of the preparation community, starting from the preparators themselves, up to the heads of departments, and paleontologists.

Image credit: courtesy Ricardo Araújo, originally published at Palaeontologia Electronica.

DeepDyve Reviewed

Many of the recent posts on this blog have dealt with issues of access to the scholarly literature for those outside the library systems of large research institutions. A digital divide is developing in academia, largely due to the expensive costs of institutional subscriptions and pay-per-download distribution schemes of commercial and non-profit publishers alike.

Thus, I was very excited to hear about the launch of DeepDyve. This website essentially offers a rental service for scholarly publications. Search a database, find an article, and view it on the website's Flash viewer. The prices are quite reasonable - 99 cents per article for the Basic Plan, $9.99/month to get 20 rentals a month on the Silver Plan, and $19.99/month to get unlimited rentals on the Gold Plan. I decided to test out a free trial of the Gold Plan and see if DeepDyve was right for me.

Promotional literature promised "30 million articles from thousands of authoritative journals," so I was expecting good things. Landing on DeepDyve's simple, attractive home page, I sat down to run my first queries.

Unfortunately, the hype hasn't yet caught up with the reality of scholarly publishing. A search for "Triceratops" launched from the web site's home page generated over 84,000 hits. . .most of which were completely irrelevant medical literature ("Median and Radial Nerve Compression About the Elbow" popped up on the first page, for instance). Using the site's advanced search filters, I was able to trim the results down to 71 articles. Of these articles, 8 were listed as "free" (they were already available through open access journals) and 61 only offered a preview of the abstract. A scant 2 articles were available for rental (from the journals Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics).

Why such a poor showing? It comes down to the fact that many of the societies and publishers that own or license our publications haven't yet reached an agreement with DeepDyve to allow rental of relevant articles. Thus, papers from heavy hitters like Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleobiology simply aren't available.

The rental plan also may turn some people off (although I don't think it is a complete deal breaker). In short, you can't download a PDF - all you can do is look at the file within the provided viewer. This is useful for those times when the article turns out to be irrelevant. But, it may ultimately prove unsatisfactory for those inevitable moments when you want to be able to access literature away from an internet connection (and we all have those times!). And, it seems somewhat unsettling to pay for content that you don't actually get to keep (unlike services such as iTunes).

I want to like DeepDyve. . .I really do! It promises to open up swaths of the scholarly literature that were previously unavailable. But, right now DeepDyve is shackled by the limited availability of publications (at least for us paleontologists). There is very little value-added over a standard Google search. Perhaps the future has big things in store. . .I'll be keeping an eye on the situation!

For additional commentary on DeepDyve, and some responses from the company, check out this post at the Scholarly Kitchen.

Buying PDFs: Truth and Consequences

On-line journals are great. You get immediate access to the latest research and can download a fully searchable PDF for later use. Journal digitization has revolutionized the pace of science communication and increased the reach of formerly obscure journals. Through the wonders of the Internet, anyone can get access! Right?

Not so fast. On-line journals offer full benefits only to those whose institution has a subscription. If you don't have a subscription, you're out of luck. . .mostly. Thankfully, it is possible to buy PDFs of individual articles. Right?

Not so fast. It is indeed possible to buy PDFs of articles from most journals. . .if you can cough up the money to do so. Let's face it. PDFs are expensive. Ridiculously so. A three page note from Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology might cost nearly $30! A six page paper from Geology runs $25. [end of this post] Is it really worth it?

Big Problems
I won't pretend that journal sales don't support professional societies I care about. I won't pretend that publishers shouldn't get compensated for their services. I won't pretend that everything is going to turn open access tomorrow.

But, I'm not shy about saying that the current system stinks. No matter how you slice it, $30 for a PDF article is unaffordable for a typical consumer of paleontological publications. The new membership rates for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which include electronic access to Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, cost $115 for e-journal only. Assuming around 120 articles per year (a rough count for JVP in 2008), this works out to a little less than $1 per article (and remember that this assumes that 100 percent of membership dues go to the journal subscription - certainly not the case). Why is there a 3,000 percent markup for non-members? Wouldn't journals be able to get by with, perhaps, a 500 percent markup over the member rate? [IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not intending to single out JVP and SVP exclusively; nearly all journal publishers are guilty of this problem. . .it just so happens that JVP is the example most relevant to most readers here]

Let's put it another way. At the current costs of PDF articles, buying every single article in the journal would cost an individual around $3,600 per year.

And let's look at it from yet another angle. Institutional paper subscriptions to JVP are $270/year for US institutions (pre-Taylor & Francis switch; we don't yet know what the cost will be post-switch). This works out to an average of$2.25/article. . .for a format that is much more expensive to deliver than an electronic document!

And one last angle. . .the Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs edited volume, which is a beautifully produced and scientifically important work, includes 20 articles, ships in hard cover and retails for $100 new. This works out to $5/article within the book. Contrast this with $30 or more for a single digital file.

Commenting in a recent thread here at the OSP, a librarian noted that libraries are paying between $2-$4 per PDF article when bought in bundles from for-profit publishers like Elsevier (which, incidentally, continues to post profits in the midst of the recession). Although it is certainly fair to have volume discounts (although the pricing schemes and the bundled journals are often rather dubious in practice), it is of dubious benefit to science to charge such a disproportionate rate to private individuals who are just trying to do some science.

Do these pricing schemes serve science? Do these pricing schemes serve the interests of the authors, who just want their work to be read?

Commonly Suggested "Solutions"
When the issue of paying for individual PDFs is brought up, there are often a number of "solutions" proposed. I put the word in quotes because, as explained below, none of these is fool-proof.

Why not write the author for a PDF?
In some cases, this is a good workaround. But it's never a perfect workaround. Sometimes authors are unresponsive, have changed email addresses, retired, or passed into the fossil record. In this case, the researcher in need of the paper is out of luck.

Why not post a PDF request to VRTPALEO or the DML?
In some cases, this is a workaround. . .one need only look at mailing list archives to see that this is a common strategy. But, PDF requests unfortunately carry a small annoyance factor for many list subscribers. Sometimes no one responds. Finally, PDF sharing by anyone other than the author is generally illegal in the eyes of the publishers and societies (but let's not pretend it doesn't happen).

Why not join the society, and then you get all of the articles as part of your membership?
Again, this is a solution in some cases. If you are a paleontological enthusiast or professional who loves (or needs) to follow every bit of the literature, you should probably join the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and/or the Palaeontological Association and/or the Paleontological Society.

But, let's be realistic. Nobody can afford to join every society to get access to all society publications. In some cases, it's just not necessary. Consider this hypothetical situation. You're a population biologist working for a small nature preserve who wants a little background on the evolutionary history of the coyote. You do a search on Google, and find a citation to Journal of American Paleontology with an abstract that details ecological shifts by coyotes during the Ice Age using isotopic analysis. You click on the link, and. . .paywall! The Society of American Paleontology wants $30 for a five page article. Is it really worth your time and money (as a population biologist) to join a society of paleontology, when you are already stretching your budget to cover dues for two more relevant societies? If the charter for the American Paleontological Society says that they are to promote and advance the science of paleontology, is the society really living up to this mandate? If the society wants to foster cross-discipline appreciation for the relevance of the field, is this happening if the research is not easily accessible? Are the authors who contribute to the journal being well-served by having their research so restricted?

Finally, some journals just aren't sponsored by societies. There is no solution in this case, other than to pay a few hundred dollars per year.

Most of the other journals charge $30 for a PDF!
This is not a solution (or even a "solution"), but an excuse. During the business meeting for a scholarly society to which I belong, I raised a concern about the prices that the society's journal was charging for individual PDFs. Can you guess the answer that I received? I remember something my mother often said to me. . ."If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you too?" Exorbitant PDF costs may be the norm, but that doesn't mean it's the ethical thing to do (especially for a non-profit society whose stated mission includes phrases like "advance the science" and "serve the common interests").

What Needs to Change?
Science (yes, that's the reason why most research is published) is not being served by the current pricing schemes. Alleged solutions for those beyond the boundaries of the pay-wall are not comprehensive, and again do not serve the interests of science.

PDFs of individual articles need to cost less. There is no way to legitimize charging $25, $30, or more for something that costs less to produce than a printed journal, particularly when it prices out to up to a 3,000 percent markup. The current pricing scheme restricts the readership of articles and creates a hierarchy of have- and have-not researchers, in a time when the Internet is supposed to fix these problems for academia. Also, let's not forget that the research behind these articles is often heavily subsidized by public tax dollars. . .

I would suggest that $5, or maybe $10 in exceptional circumstances (e.g., a 50 page monograph) is a cost that I would be willing to pay for a PDF. I would also submit that many journals would see increased PDF sales (particularly for popular topics, such as dinosaurs) if the price was set at something mere mortals could afford to pay.

Is There a Solution?
Right now, it sounds like I'm doing a lot of complaining and not a lot of problem solving. Well. . .yes. This post is partly a rant. Unless people are aware of the problem, nothing will ever happen.

So what can we do? Here are a few suggestions:

• Ask journals and professional societies to consider the implications of pricing schemes for PDFs. Speak out to the people who matter. Let them know how you feel, and how it affects you.
  
• Don't pay the ridiculous charges. Find low-cost, legal alternatives (e.g., writing to the author or interlibrary loans) whenever possible.
• Submit your work only to journals with researcher-friendly publishing policies.
• If you are an author, do everything you (legally) can to get your work out there for free. If the journal allows you to post a PDF, do so. Respond promptly to PDF requests from other individuals.
  

What are your thoughts?

Addendum 1: As if by magic, this post at The Scholarly Kitchen appeared at nearly the same instant as I hit the "publish" button on this post. I haven't followed up on the service (which essentially offers cheap rental access to articles from various scientific publishers), but will certainly be looking into it.

Addendum 2: Matt over at Protichnoctem has a nice post with more on the issue of buying PDFs. Go check it out!

The Journal List
The Anatomical Record (Wiley): $29.95
Bulletin of the Geological Society of America (GSA): $25 (GSA website)
Bulletin of the Geological Society of America (GSA): $32 (Geoscience World website)
Cretaceous Research (Elsevier): $31.50
Geology (GSA): $25 (GSA website)
Geology (GSA): $32 (Geoscience World website)
Ichnos (Taylor & Francis): $37
Journal of Experimental Biology (The Company of Biologists): $10
Journal of Morphology (Wiley): $29.95
Journal of Paleontology (Paleontological Society): $12 (BioOne website)
Journal of Paleontology (Paleontological Society): $15 (Geoscience World website)
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP): $30 (BioOne website)
Nature (Nature Publishing Group): $32
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (Elsevier): $31.50
Paleobiology (Paleontological Society): $12 (BioOne website)
Paleobiology (Paleontological Society): $15 (Geoscience World website)
Palaeontology (Wiley): $29.95
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (NASUSA): $10 ($25/full journal access for seven days)
Science (AAAS): $15

More on JVP's Big Switch

Astute paleontologists are likely aware by now of major changes ahead for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, announced in July and detailed in this blog post. The journal has grown at a tremendous rate, and something needed to be done in order to ensure continued high quality, timely publication, and financial viability into the foreseeable future. After extensive research, the decision was made to partner with commercial publisher Taylor & Francis.

Of course, many questions remained for those of us who follow issues of academic publishing and access to publications. What would happen to copyright of articles? Who gets the profits from sales of the journal? Would authors still be able to post a PDF on their website? So, I drafted an email and sent it along to the relevant folks in SVP's leadership.

I am now happy to say that an extensive list of FAQs, responding to questions from me and other folks, is now posted at SVP's website [link to PDF]. Every single one of my questions (and others) was addressed, in detail. My sincere thanks goes to the individuals at SVP who put this together! Major points (and some commentary) follow:

Copyright
Copyright will stay with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (as appropriate - publications produced by many government workers should be exempted), as has been the case in the past. This is a Good Thing.

Is This Forever?
The contract lasts five years - so, SVP has the option to find another publisher or renegotiate at the end of this period. Again, a Good Thing. This also means, however, that those society members with an interest in commenting on or influencing the renewal process have about three (or at most four) years to wait before springing to action. Mark your calendars for SVP 2012 and 2013. Given the rapid pace at which academic publishing is changing right now, it will certainly be worth taking a close look at the conditions of journal publication in a few years.

Author Benefits
In the new publishing arrangement, authors will benefit from faster publication (by going from four issues a year to six). This is, of course, a major plus. Other benefits are, in my opinion, slightly more mixed. Gone are the days when we can (legally) pay an affordable fee for the right to post the PDF of our published work to a personal web page. We will, however, receive a PDF that can be emailed to colleagues and those who request it. This unfortunately represents a step backwards for the (legal) distribution of paleontological information. As a consolation prize, though, we get 50 free paper reprints of our articles! [editorial note: I had a rant written on this topic, but decided against including it here in the end. Suffice it to say that I personally find paper reprints less than useful in this day and age, recognizing that others may not share this opinion]

Open Access
It is probably no surprise that JVP will not be going to an open access model, even a delayed open access model. On a small positive note, authors now have the option of purchasing complete open access for their article (presently, to the tune of $3,250) through Taylor & Francis's iOpenAccess program.

Final Thoughts
It's still far too early to know for sure how JVP's transition to Taylor & Francis will work out. As mentioned above, the world of academic publishing is changing. Only time will tell if the switch is a Totally Good Thing or not.

Does Anyone Read Our Papers?

Writing papers is fun, but rather pointless unless anyone reads them, uses them, and cites them. How do we find out if anyone reads our work? Gross citation counts are nice, and easily provided by ISI Web of Science (easily, that is, if your institution coughs up the money to pay for the database) or Google Scholar (free, but not always as comprehensive as ISI's counts). These services also provide links to the papers with the citations. This is useful, but everyone knows that more people read the paper than actually cite it. The problem, of course, is that there is no way to know how many are reading the darned thing.

Until now. Public Library of Science (the publishers of PLoS ONE, PLoS Biology, and other open access journals; in the interests of full disclosure, I'm an academic editor for PLoS ONE) has just completely shifted the playing field. Free, article-level metrics are now available. Easily. With one click, you can find out how many page views a research article has had and how many people have downloaded the PDF. Better yet, you can track trends through time and download the data into an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis.

Just for fun, I checked out the stats for my co-authored paper on Triceratops horn use, which was published in January of this year. To date, the publication has had over 7,000 page views, 851 downloads of the PDF file, and 1 citation. The paper on Darwinius, which came out shortly after the Triceratops paper, has had over 66,000 page views and over 5,800 downloads of the PDF file. PLoS ONE also provides summary tables for selected disciplines - a paper on evolutionary biology (which includes paleontology, for most purposes) published in 2008 could expect to have racked up at least 2,200 hits by now.

So what's to like here? Well, an author gets an immediate sense if someone is paying attention to a publication. Page views and PDF downloads are a valuable tool for gauging community interest. In concert with citation data, it's probably a far better gauge of a paper's worth than the impact factor for the journal that the publication happens to show up in. The data are also freely available, transparent, and frequently updated. The latter is particularly important because it may be years before a paper's full impact is known. An open-access metric for an open-access world.

And are there any problems? As with any metric, the unfortunate answer is yes. Page view counts probably include a lot of casual readers, who read the abstract and promptly forget the existence of the article in question. These counts could also be gamed by "click contests" - one need only smell the stench emanating from the hordes of Pharyngula's zombie fanboyz as they lurch towards the next on-line poll to realize just how malleable page view data potentially are (although to PLoS's credit, they have attempted to filter out any robot and web crawler traffic). The metric will also be abused by administrators, who will still make career-ending decisions based on a number (although at least it's a hopefully more relevant number this time). Once again to PLoS's credit, they provide explanatory and cautionary pages candidly outlining the pros and cons of the metric.

I suspect that other journals will follow suit - it may not happen tomorrow, but it will happen. We may be seeing the death of the traditional, sometimes tyrannical, "impact factor." Let's hope we don't replace it with a new despot!

PalArch Goes Open Access

Postings have been slow lately, as we enter the busy field season. I have a few comments to respond to, and a few posts in the works. For now, I wanted to point out that the PalArch family of journals has now gone completely open access. Of particular interest for readers of this blog is the PalArch Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Congratulations to the journal staff on making this a reality!

Re-posted from a message to the VRTPALEO listserv by Brian Beatty:

Greetings!
The PalArch Foundation is happy to announce that our website (www.palarch.nl) has been revised and updated. The PalArch Foundation supports three peer-reviewed, online journals focusing on Vertebrate Palaeontology, Archaeology of Northwest Europe, and Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptlogy.

These new revisions includes *RSS feeds*, as well as sections for *comments* with each paper, much like one has in a blog format. We hope this will encourage more open discussions of work and lead to collaborations and more rapid developments in our fields of interest.

Though we are still updating some texts and uploading the archive of book reviews, we have FINALLY managed to get the support and organization to have not only the site revised and easier to use, but also the *entire archive of papers available OPEN ACCESS*. PalArch's Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology can be accessed here: http://www.palarch.nl/category/vertebrate_palaeontology/

More importantly, we have revised the operational plan of the journals to allow us to maximize the utility of being an online journal. That is, instead of publishing issues on a periodical basis, *papers will be published as soon as they are accepted, formatted, and finally approved*. This way we can more rapidly share new information, eliminating much of the logistical delays of publishing and retaining only the delays of critical, thorough peer review.

We hope you will consider submitting papers to PalArch, and take advantage of the open access, archive, and commenting features. PalArch is an entirely volunteer-run journal and a non-profit run by people wanting to get good science published without the financial and political hassles that can occur, and we hope you will participate.

Open Access Dissertations in Physical Anthropology

My colleague Biren Patel (who is doing some awesome research on primate locomotion and functional morphology) passed on this link to open access dissertations in physical anthropology and paleoanthropology, hosted by the Paleoanthropology Society. A number of very nice dissertations from major centers of anthropological research are posted here, some that have been published formally and others that have not. We paleontologists would do well to heed more closely the world of physical anthropology - oftentimes the "hot new techniques" presented at SVP have long been old news in the anthropology world. Furthermore, a number of our anthropological colleagues are asking the exact same questions we are! It pays to keep up on their literature.

The Paleoanthropology Society also hosts an on-line, open access journal called (oddly enough) PaleoAnthropology. Go check it out!

The True Cost of Journal Subscriptions

Most of us paleontologists have a handful of journals to which we personally subscribe, usually associated with society memberships. In other cases, we rely upon our institution's library, other local libraries, or the goodwill of colleagues to get access. In these days of tight budgets, many libraries are eyeing journal cuts. But, one might say, "I only pay $100 a year in membership dues--surely the institutions can't be that strapped for cash!" The key thing, though, is that institutional and individual subscriptions are entirely different animals.

To some extent, it is easy to legitimize a higher cost for an institutional subscription. An inexpensive journal is a perk of society membership, for instance--and this low cost is subsidized in part by library subscription fees. Additionally, the journal publishers might have a much slimmer amount of income per printed page for institutional subscriptions (because many, many people would be utilizing the same copy). So, to keep things running smoothly, it's necessary to charge a little more to an institution.

Unfortunately, the problem results when subscription rates increase at a rate exceeding institutional budgets. The fact of the matter is that some journals are just ridiculously expensive for a library to purchase! Just how ridiculously expensive, you might ask? Let's consider the case of the journal Palaeoworld. In 2008, the journal had a total of 264 published pages, and an annual institutional subscription cost of $532. This comes to a cost per printed page of $2.02--no wonder most institutions can't afford it!

You are probably thinking to yourself that I've chosen a ridiculous example--and to some extent I have. Palaeoworld is a relatively small journal targeting a limited audience. Let's look at a "better known" journal--Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. They regularly publish high-impact, groundbreaking research--to the tune of $1.02 per page. The venerable Cretaceous Research costs $1.09 per page!

Then, there are the cases that are so egregiously expensive that it simply boggles the mind. Consider Journal of Morphology. It's not strictly a paleontology journal, but it frequently publishes paleontology-related content--and its reputation is pretty solid. In fact, I've even published there. Yet, a yearly institutional subscription costs $6,031!!! That works out to a staggering $3.89 per page.

Are there any reasonably-priced journals for institutions? Fortunately, there are some, if you dig around a little. Kudos to the folks at Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, with a price per page of 22 cents. And let's hear it for Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, barely tipping the scales at 13 cents per page. As opposed to the examples above, these are society or labor-of-love journals published through relatively small publishing houses. Yet, even the for-profit journal Nature manages 42 cents per page for institutional subscriptions. In my mind, these are all perfectly reasonable costs.

Some savvy publishers have figured out a very slick way to seemingly lower the price--"bundling" packages of electronically-accessed journals together for a group discount. This is somewhat admirable in modestly reducing the overall price per page (for the short term), but it also means that you get stuck with supporting journals of very, very dubious scientific quality. See this news release from Cornell about why it's not a good economic idea in the long-run, too (and a quick internet search will turn up many other examples).

I think that the concept of commercial journal publication is not inherently bad--there are a number of good-quality journals run by such companies. It's just that they're so blatantly overcharging for access to this content! A journal clocking in at $2/page is not sustainable in the long-run. Although I have a strong preference for open access (which someone has to pay for somewhere along the line), I also recognize that some very good closed-access journals provide a valuable service (and see delayed open access as a viable compromise).

So, I challenge you publishing readers (and myself) to weigh all of the factors before submitting that next research paper. What is the impact factor? How respected is the journal? And, will people be able to afford to read it? Let's publish responsibly.

Methodological Notes--I grabbed the most recent available annual, instutional subscription prices from publishers' websites, with rates for US institutions in US dollars whenever possible. I then counted up the total number of pages published in 2008, and divided this by the subscription rate to come up with a value for dollars/page.

Get the Goat Head Paper for Free!

I am happy to announce that one of the papers resulting from my dissertation research, on head-butting in goats, is now freely available for download. You can get the paper in HTML or PDF form. For a previous blog post on the topic, check here. Journal of Experimental Biology is one of the progressive mainstream journals that opens up their archives after six months. . .it is a high-profile publication (impact factor in 2007, for what it's worth, of 2.972), and there are a lot of really cool papers in there (beyond mine, of course). Go check it out!

Reference
Farke AA (2008) Frontal sinuses and head-butting in goats: a finite element analysis. Journal of Experimental Biology 211: 3085-3094. doi:10.1242/jeb.019042

Open Access Paleontology Journals - Community Opinions

We're almost to the end of the series on the 2009 Open Access Paleontology Journal Rankings (see other posts in the series here, here, and here)! Citations and number of papers are all well-and-good, but one thing that's often omitted in journal comparisons is community opinion. In other words, what do paleontologists think of this or that journal? Have they even heard of the journal?

In order to see how open access journals have fared within the paleontology community, I ran an informal survey. It provided a list of open access journals in paleontology, and asked respondents to rank each publication as "excellent," "good," "fair," "poor," or "I've never heard of it." This survey was advertised on this blog, Facebook, the Dinosaur Mailing List, VRTPALEO Mailing List, and Laelaps. Ninety-two people responded, but not everyone answered every question. I have no idea (for the most part) who filled out the survey, but given the scope of advertising and the bits of feedback I received, I suspect respondents were primarily professional paleontologists and students of paleontology. Given the distribution of results, I have no reason to suspect poll crashing, but would also caution that this is not a scientifically sampled survey, either.

The results were then tallied, and an average rating was assigned to each. An excellent counted as 1 point, good as 2, fair as 3, poor as 4, and "never heard of it" as 5 points. So, here's the list from highest to lowest rating; the results are presented as "Journal Name, Average Score, (# Excellent Ratings, # Good Ratings, # Fair Ratings, # Poor Ratings, # Never Heard of It, Total Responses)." Journals with immediate open access are listed in bold.

Community Opinions of Open Access Paleontological Journals, 2009

1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1.45 (53, 19, 7, 1, 0; 80 total)
   
2. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 1.52 (59, 20, 3, 1, 4; 87 total)
3. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 1.56 (53, 28, 5, 0, 3; 89 total)
4. American Museum Novitates, 1.57 (51, 33, 3, 0, 3; 90 total)
5. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 1.64 (51, 30, 6, 0, 4; 91 total)
6. PLoS ONE, 1.79 (44, 27, 8, 3, 4; 86 total)
7. Palaeontologia Electronica, 1.94 (30, 38, 16, 0, 3; 87 total)
   
8. PLoS Biology, 1.99 (36, 32, 4, 2, 9; 83 total)
9. Biology Letters, 2.36 (23, 33, 11, 1, 13; 81 total)
   
10. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, 2.58 (18, 32, 11, 4, 15; 80 total)
11. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 2.62 (19, 28, 17, 1, 17; 82 total)
12. Paläontologische Zeitschrift, 2.64 (17, 30, 20, 3, 15; 85 total)
13. Ameghiniana, 2.87 (12, 27, 23, 4, 18; 84 total)
14. Contributions in Science from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 2.92 (14, 27, 15, 6, 21; 83 total)
15. Vertebrata PalAsiatica, 3.01 (10, 22, 26, 9, 17; 84 total)
16. Geodiversitas, 3.08 (9, 29, 17, 4, 25; 84 total)
17. Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, 3.31 (11, 20, 14, 3, 32; 80 total)
18. Revue de Paléobiologie, 3.48 (5, 23, 15, 3, 34; 80 total)
19. PalArch, 3.55 (4, 13, 28, 9, 29; 83 total)
20. Palaeodiversity, 3.71 (3, 22, 13, 3, 42; 83 total)
21. Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, 3.94 (3, 8, 19, 10, 39; 79 total)
22. The Open Paleontology Journal, 4.01 (4, 14, 9, 5, 50; 82 total)
23. Journal of Paleontological Techniques, 4.04 (5, 7, 14, 8, 46; 80 total)
24. Geologica Acta, 4.05 (1, 13, 15, 2, 48; 79 total)
    
25. Estudios Geológicos, 4.12 (1, 12, 14, 5, 51; 83 total)
26. Coloquios de Paleontología, 4.24 (2, 8, 14, 3, 56; 83 total)
27. Geogaceta, 4.43 (0, 7, 10, 5, 59; 81 total)
    
28. Natura Nascosta, 4.49 (0, 6, 8, 7, 60; 81 total)
29. Joannea - Geologie und Paläontologie, 4.51 (2, 5, 5, 7, 62; 81 total)
    

Notes
A low rating does not necessarily mean a journal for which paleontologists have a low opinion. In at least some cases (e.g., Palaeodiversity), low scores result largely from poor "brand recognition." As the crop of new journals matures, and as the internet allows broader distribution of work, this situation is likely to change.

The journals Revista Brasileira de Paleontologia, Science, and Journal of Paleontological Sciences were inadvertently omitted from the poll.

Final Thoughts
In hindsight, there are a few more things I'm curious about. How do major closed access journals such as JVP stack up against their open access brethern? Who responded to the survey, and how do different types of paleontologists (students, early career and late career professionals, etc.) consider open access journals versus their closed access counterparts? What are general attitudes amongst paleontologists towards open access?

Coming Up. . .A Final Post With Raw Scores

Open Access Paleontology Rankings - Part III

This post continues the series on the 2009 Open Access Paleontology Journal Rankings. Previously, I posted the rankings for Immediate Open Access Journals for General Submission and All Immediate Open Access Journals (including those museum publications with more restrictive submission requirements). Here, I'll release the final set of rankings, including both immediate open access and delayed open access journals. A number of notable journals (such as Science) now allow open access after a period of one year, so it only seemed fair to address them too.

As always, the ratings are based on a combination of journal citations, recent citations, number of articles, and community opinion (outlined previously). At the end of this series, I will post the raw data underlying the ratings.

Don't Forget The Caveats
Remember, these rankings are only one method for measuring the efficacy, quality, and impact of a journal, and you will probably disagree with one or more of the placements on the list. Especially for relatively young journals, rankings may change rapidly in the coming years.

Top Open Access Journals for Paleontology 2009
(General Results, Immediate and Delayed OA)

1. Science*
2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
3. Proceedings of the Royal Society B
4. PLoS Biology
5. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History [tie]
   
6. [tie]
   
7. American Museum Novitates
   
8. Biology Letters
9. Ameghiniana
10. Paläontologische Zeitschrift
11. PLoS ONE
12. Palaeontologia Electronica
13. Geologica Acta
14. Vertebrata PalAsiatica
15. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Geodiversitas [tie]
16. [tie]
    
17. Geogaceta
18. Estudios Geológicos
19. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology
20. Revue de Paléobiologie
21. Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum
22. Contributions in Science from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology [tie]
    
23. [tie]
    
24. Journal of Paleontological Sciences*
    
25. Coloquios de Paleontología
26. PalArch
27. Joannea - Geologie und Paläontologie
28. Natura Nascosta
29. The Open Paleontology Journal
30. Palaeodiversity
31. Journal of Paleontological Techniques
    

*not included in the community ranking survey

Note
It should be noted that some very fine journals (e.g., PaleoBios) have open access archives for older issues (five years or older), but these publications were not included on the general list. I made the somewhat arbitrary decision to exclude journals with lag times of greater than one year.

Up Next. . .Community Rankings of Journals

Open Access Paleontology Rankings - Part II

This post continues the series on the 2009 Open Access Paleontology Journal Rankings. Previously, I posted the rankings for Immediate Open Access Journals for General Submission. Here, I'll release the general results for Immediate Open Access Journals. As mentioned previously, this category includes both journals to which anyone can submit a manuscript, as well as those with more restrictive authorship requirements. This latter category includes several museum publications, such as American Museum Novitates [see their submission policies here]. For journals such as these, authors usually must be an employee or research associate of the publishing institution, or receive special invitation. Journals with delayed open access (such as Science) are not included on the present list.

As always, the ratings are based on a combination of journal citations, recent citations, number of articles, and community opinion (outlined in my previous post). At the end of this series, I will post the raw data underlying the ratings.

Yet Again With the Caveats
Remember, these rankings are only one method for measuring the efficacy, quality, and impact of a journal, and you will probably disagree with one or more of the placements on the list. Especially for relatively young journals, rankings may change rapidly in the coming years.

Top Immediate Open Access Journals for Paleontology 2009
(General Results)

1. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, American Museum Novitates, PLoS Biology [tie]
   
2. [tie]
3. [tie]
4. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History
5. Ameghiniana
6. Paläontologische Zeitschrift
7. PLoS ONE
8. Palaeontologia Electronica
9. Geologica Acta
10. Vertebrata PalAsiatica
11. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Geodiversitas [tie]
12. [tie]
    
13. Geogaceta
14. Estudios Geológicos
15. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology
16. Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology
17. Revue de Paléobiologie
18. Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum
19. Contributions in Science from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
20. Journal of Paleontological Sciences*
    
21. Coloquios de Paleontología
22. PalArch
23. Joannea - Geologie und Paläontologie
24. Natura Nascosta
25. The Open Paleontology Journal
26. Palaeodiversity
27. Journal of Paleontological Techniques
    

*not included in the community ranking survey

Notes
In some cases, relative ranks of journals may differ in this list from the previous category. This is because journals are ranked relative to all entries in a single category. For instance, PLoS ONE and PLoS Biology were tied in the last list, but are separated in the present one. Let's consider the number of article citations - relative to all immediate open access journals, PLoS ONE is ranked fifteenth and PLoS Biology is ranked second. When we exclude museum journals, the ratings move to ninth and second, respectively. When you add up all the rankings, little changes like this can jostle a journal's position; such behavior is particularly common near the top of the list. Later, I'll be releasing the underlying data and you can see for yourself.

Up Next. . .All Open Access Journals

Open Access Paleontology Rankings - Part I

Over the next few days, I'll be posting results of the 2009 Open Access Paleontology Journal Rankings. These results will be divided into several categories, including:

• Immediate Open Access Journals for General Submission (journals to which anyone can submit [excluding most museum publications with more exclusive author criteria], and which provide open access immediately upon publication)
• Immediate Open Access Journals (same as above, with museum publications included)
• All Open Access Journals (includes those journals with delayed open access)
• Community Ranked Open Access Journals (journals as ranked by the opinions from the survey)

In this post, I'll just be covering Immediate Open Access Journals for General Submission. As described above, this includes only journals with immediate open access (versus open access after a set delay) and excludes those with restrictive authorship criteria (e.g., museum publications which usually require employment, association, or invitation to submit). The ratings are based on a combination of journal citations, recent citations, and community opinion (outlined in my previous post). At the end of this series, I will post the raw data underlying the ratings.

Again With the Caveats
Remember, these rankings are only one method for measuring the efficacy, quality, and impact of a journal, and you will probably disagree with one or more of the placements on the list. Especially for relatively young journals, rankings may change rapidly in the coming years.

Top Immediate Open Access Journals for Paleontology 2009
(General Submission)

1. Ameghiniana
2. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica
3. PLoS ONE, PLoS Biology [tie]
   
4. [tied for 3]
   
5. Paläontologische Zeitschrift
6. Geologica Acta
7. Palaeontologia Electronica
8. Vertebrata PalAsiatica
9. Geodiversitas
10. Geogaceta
11. Estudios Geológicos
12. Revue de Paléobiologie
13. Journal of Paleontological Sciences*
    
14. Coloquios de Paleontología
15. PalArch
16. Joannea - Geologie und Paläontologie
17. Natura Nascosta
18. The Open Paleontology Journal
19. Palaeodiversity
20. Journal of Paleontological Techniques
    

*not included in the community ranking survey

Notes
While compiling the results, I noted that sometimes community opinions of a journal varied from the rankings by sheer number of articles or citations. This will be highlighted in a future post. So, if you're worried because your favorite journal is lower than you thought, or your least favorite journal is higher than you thought, you'll probably be interested to see those results.

Unlike the widely-known Science Citation Index, these rankings include very new journals as well as more established journals. Thus, some rankings may change in the coming years are the new kids on the block accumulate more citations, more papers, and more exposure. Still, it is very interesting to note how some quite new journals (such as PLoS ONE) still have a high position within the list.

It is interesting to note how truly global this list is - a healthy mix of journals from South America, Europe, Asia, and North America round out the top 10. What does this mean, if anything, for the future of paleontology?

Up Next. . .All Immediate Open Access Journals